It's the work they don't like
Page 24
Page 25
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Caminercial Motor for the L./past two weeks has carried articles about drivers' pay which highlighted the shortage of HGV drivers.
Together with the editor, I attended a conference where we were told that there are a million-and-a-quarter people with the necessary qualification. This would indicate to me that the shortage is not of drivers, but of an attractive form of employment. If pay were the only criterion there would never have been any lorry drivers.
When I started, my dad said: "Don't get any big ideas; everyone sees us as a bit better than tramps. That bit is only because we ride where they walk." Forty-two years on, that situation has not improved—in fact it is probably worse.
The truth is that nobody wants lorries and, by association, their drivers. This applies equally to Eddie and his shiny fleet with its uniformed drivers, and the owner-driver with his ageing unit and greasy overalls (usually from doing his own repairs). In the old days there were signs saying "No tinkers or travellers". These have been replaced by "No HGVs" or the crossed-out sil houette. Having survived the wrath of the motoring public and the disdain of "goods inwards", where does the driver lay his weary head at the end of his 15-hour day? If he is lucky, in a well-appointed truckstop; but far more likely, in the corner of an industrial estate or a lay-by with every passing wagon giving his trailer a whoosh to rock him off to sleep, sometimes to be woken by Old Bill wanting him to blow into a machine or to move "because overnight parking is not allowed in lay-bys".
Dave Green of the FTA talks of career paths. We used to have one: trailer boy, van boy or driver's mate. Four wheeler on smalls. Shunter. Roamer. Then when you got too old for all the humping and dashing about, night trunk with its regular schedules, or perhaps heavy haulage, where wisdom and patience were at a premium.
In recent years everything has been done to make lorrydriving easy: curtainsiders, pallets, piggy-back fork-lifts, on-board cranes—even units so loaded with computers that the only thing left for the driver to do is steer 'em and stop 'em. With all that and still no takers, it must surely be more than a hint that there is something radically wrong at the heart of the industry. It certainly makes me glad I am only an interested onlooker.
Bob Rust,
Ra.sildon.