Post by exile on Aug 27, 2021 10:17:18 GMT 1
I think it shows more the lack of investment by companies in training and a reliance on cheap foreign labour.
It is a lot more complicated than that. That applies to the UK quite probably - indeed almost certainly - but is less the case in other European countries - some of which are those suppliers of cheap foreign labour.
Main issues are:
1. Changes to conscription rules. Countries have stopped conscription or have allowed a much broader base of service than just 2/3 years in the army/navy/air force. Those that joined the Army were very likely to get HGV training and would leave with a licence allowing them to go straight into a hauliers' office and ask for a job - an ideal entry for the less academically inclined. That does not happen if you spend your service time working for a charity or hospital service.
2. While big haulage companies (in Germany at least) are happy to take potential drivers through their training, during this period the employee is not on full driver pay. Smaller companies find the process too expensive and have now to live off the "droppings" from the bigger companies.
3. Changes in expectation. Young people today expect to be able to spend each night in their own bed - or that of someone they would like to get to know if only for a short period. Sleeping in the cab, away from home for days or often longer, stops being exciting and especially so when these drivers are no longer considered as knight of the road.
4. Work pressures. Just in Time delivery has put immense pressures on drivers to arrive at their delivery location on time - irrespective of road conditions or even safety. Delivery slots can be as short as 15 minutes in the extreme and are frequently more taxing than just morning or afternoon. [ As an aside that applies to us with our deliveries via the internet when we complain that the driver did not arrive at the appointed time - or even when the delivery company gives just a day and no time, meaning we have to stay in all day.]
5. Business economics. The modern production business has, in order to survive the competition, to become more and more efficient as we the consumer demand better quality at lower prices. This results in take overs, amalgamations and concentration of business centres in bigger and bigger factories (or farms - same applies to agriculture). This in turn means that goods then have to be transported bigger distances and that means more lorries required. The non-availability of PPE during the C19 crisis is perhaps the classic example although there goods were not being transported by road for much of the distance. That in turn has led to a further change in expectation. People generally expect to be able to get and use a degree which means their is a shortage of labour to make locally things that require repetitive manual work. And here we again see the use of cheap "foreign" labour to do such work in sweatshops. "Foreign" = immigrants (often not first generation immigrants so foreign becomes questionable).
6. Increased consumption - put simply we are buying more "stuff". Stuff needs to be transported.
We are to a greater or lesser extent part of the problem. WE consume, we raise expectations on our children, we downgrade the job of the lorry driver (go on tell me you have never cursed the truck in front of you).