England's catastrophic loss of truck (lorry) drivers---why this week?

In My Humble Opinion
1

England is on the verge of collapse…
Toilet paper is gone, fuel supplies hard to find, and mass starvation about to begin.
Well, that’s the way some news sites are reporting it.

More realistically, it seems that a few stories created a bit of a stir, which led to panic buying , which created the current shortages.

But underlying it all is a real problem: a massive shortage of drivers.— hundreds of thousands of professional drivers.
My question is in the thread title: Why is this happening so suddenly right now?,
The shortage has been blamed on a lot of causes: Brexit, covid, lack of visas for foreign workers, etc.These are problems which have been developing for two years.
Why is it suddenly all coming to the crisis point this week?

2

WAG: Pretty much the same reason there were shortages of TP and gasoline in the US: panic buying. There wasn’t really a shortage, but once word got around that there might be a shortage, everyone rushed to the stores/gas stations and hoarded, creating the shortage.

As to why this week? WAG: that’s when the news of the impending shortage broke.

3

Are other European nations experiencing the same trouble? Germany, Italy, France…

I’m sure it is not entirely down to Brexit but I did read an article a couple of days ago of Johnson relaxing the Visa rules for foreign truck drivers to come over to work and help the UK out. The article I read however contained interviews with European drivers saying they would not take up the offer.

4

The US had a shortage of products, but not of drivers to deliver them.It was a temporary problem, easily solved when people calm down, or factories increase their production
. England apparently has a different situation: a deep, systematic problem with no easy solution.
They are mobilizing the army to provide drivers of fuel tankers.There is enough fuel, but there’s no way to deliver it. How did they deliver it for the past 2 years? And suddenly this week everybody is noticing there’s a problem?

5

Yes, other European countries are experiencing a shortage of drivers (but EU freedom of movement allows them to recruit from member states further east). So they’re not having panic buying or shortages.

In the UK, it’s a long-term problem of insufficient local recruitment, and existing drivers dropping out, because of low wages and unsatisfactory working conditions, coupled with a massive backlog (thanks to Covid) of tests for new drivers.

It sort of summarises the problem with just-in-time cost(and corner)-cutting over years - and the difficulty of adjusting quickly to post-Brexit circumstances

6

The U.S. has had a shortage of commercial drivers for essentially a decade or more. At one point in the pandemic we had an acute shortage of drivers who deliver gasoline to gas stations, because you have to get special certifications on top of just a regular CDL to transport a flammable fuel, and the restrictions on who can get those certifications is stricter (for example criminal background check is more important and certain crimes are disqualifying which aren’t for just regular CDL, and you also have to subject to certain health screenings as well.)

I don’t know at all if it’s a universal problem in the West, but a shortage of commercial drivers in the U.S. long predates covid. The major reason is long hours, disruptive to family life, and the pay isn’t sufficiently high to compensate for it. Long haul trucking has generally seen a decline in real wages since the 80s. In the 70s and early 80s a larger share of truckers were independent drivers that owned their own rigs (this is now difficult for most new drivers to easily get into), or they were members of the Teamsters Union which had negotiated much better relative pay than many starting drivers today. Despite the driver shortage lots of commercial trucking firms still start people out regularly in a range of compensation as low as $40k-45k. Experienced drivers, especially with certifications to haul special loads and other circumstances, can easily clear six figures today. But the “mainline” truckers in the U.S., back in the 70s and 80s were starting out in inflation-adjusted wages much more like $75-80k+ a year and it went up with experience.

While lots of trucking firms heavily advertise all the “incentives” they offer, the reality is wages have stagnated like they have in many blue collar industries and companies simply don’t want to dramatically increase wages, so they prefer to just see things delivered slower and throw their hands up and say there is a “shortage.” There is not an actual shortage of people, there is a shortage of people who will take their relatively low pay for a job that will sometimes have you away from your family for 5 weeks of every 6.

7

AIUI there is plenty of supply at the terminals but not enough drivers to get the product to the consumer.

Yay Brexit! :roll_eyes:

Supposedly the government is going to offer 3-month visas to foreign workers to come drive. Seems a really lame effort but that’s their answer (so far).

What I do not get is why wages are not rising? Isn’t that what we’ve been told about the free market? If there is a shortage wages rise to attract more people to the job?

So, why aren’t they raising wages?

8

The Times (NY) today had an article on this. It seems that as big companies bought up trucking companies the drivers wages and benefits have fallen, and their equivalent of truck stops have degenerated, with dirty showers, inadequate toilets and lack of safety. They’ve never tried to recruit women to drive, but with unsafe truck stops they’re not going to be able to.
A driver quoted a friend saying that why should he drive a bomb (a hazardous cargo) long distances when he can make as much bringing crisps to the local grocer.

As for the visa extension, it is less than 3 months after the paperwork and moving is done, and why would someone give up a steady job for three months of work in a place that clearly doesn’t want him?
So it seems to be part Brexit and part employers screwing employees and wondering why they don’t flock back when there is a shortage.

9

Trucking also has a long lead time for training and certification. They may raise wages, but it could take months before those wages result in new truckers, and people may be leery of taking the time to get trained for higher wages that could vanish in a puff of smoke before they even have their license.

This is the result of taking jobs that are important to the economy, and treating the people who do those jobs like chumps. Squeezing them for every penny of profit possible, for years on end. People aren’t interested in get treated like crap, so they’re OK with avoiding these jobs.

10

It’s ok.
Boris will save us.

:roll_eyes:

11

AIUI, “they” have topped up the investment in autonomous driving systems instead. A much better investment, if they ever manage to pull it off (I have my doubts, but I had doubts about machine translation too and see what they can do now): they can lay off ALL drivers and it will be scalable to the whole world. Imagine the posibilities! Tesla shares have been rising again, I guess.

12

It’s not. It’s been an issue for a long time. It’s just that now other factors are making you feel it.

This is a problem in the UK, USA, and Canada, at the very least, and has been a problem for at least thirty years.

13

In Germany most long haul lorry companies are from Eastern Europe, often Ukrainian, but also Romanian, Bulgarian, Latvian… Much cheaper. The companies are not really foreign, the capital is from Western Europe, but the companies are registered there and most importantly: the drivers are from there. And the lorries themselves, which means, for instance, cheaper and laxer technical standards and inspections. Brexit has disrupted that too, it seems. Has NAFTA not opened the market for Mexican lorries in the US?

14

AIUI, the treaty has a limit to how far Mexican trucks can travel into the US and it’s not very far. I don’t know what it is, but around 50 to 100 miles. That’s a long way in the UK, but very short for the US, especially in the SW.

15

This has been building for years - the “sudden” is that the metaphorical chickens came home to roost this week due to an episode of panic-buying by the general public. Which was going to happen sooner or later.

Yeah. 5,000 new visas. When they need 100,000 new drivers. Getting 5% of the needed drivers is NOT going to solve this problem!

Apparently a lot of truck drivers in the UK prior to Brexit were from other places in Europe. When Brexit happened a bunch went to the EU. Then covid hit and a bunch more went home. None of these folks seem to want to go back to the UK.

Why should they? Long hours, days/weeks away from home, poor conditions, a lack of available/accessible toilets fer cryin’ out loud…! Also licensing issues and lack of new drivers in the training pipeline because of halts to these facilities due to covid. Some drivers have quit to pursue other lines of work that allow them to actually see their families on a daily basis that pay the same (or even more) for less hassle.

Yes, Europe is also having a problem with a driver shortage but at present it’s not as bad as the UK and (so far as I know) EU countries haven’t been hit with the episode of panic buying. But even if they were, relocating/recruiting drivers within the EU will be easier than having them cross the EU/anywhere else border.

Incorrect - the US trucking industry has thousands of positions to be filled. It just isn’t as bad as the UK at the moment.

Shhh! Don’t give the little people ideas! [/sarcasm]

In today’s oligarchy supply and demand doesn’t apply to the lower socio-economic classes - they’re supposed to be grateful for the crumbs their “betters” give them. Supply and demand spurred increasing compensation only applies to the executive class. [insert barfing smiley]

^ This.

Essential jobs should be treated like they’re actually, you know, essential. Important.

And Canadian.

But covid-related border closures have played merry hell with that, too.

The difference is that the US is a much larger geographical area than the UK - even with shortages there is an inherently larger pool of drivers so shifting them around happens with a different level of difficulty.

16

Another thing: In Western Europe today you don’t engage a lorry driver anymore, you contract a company that provides the lorry and the company provides the driver. Perhaps the UK does not only have a dearth of drivers, but of lorries too.

This! (bolding mine, because it is so brilliant, I will steal this when the occasion arises!)

17

t is a perfect storm!

The driver shortage in the EU is moderated by the free mobility of labour. Drivers can cross borders easily with little paperwork.

Free mobility of labour…like in the US and EU is regarded as something that it evil by the current Conservative administration in the UK. They decided that one of the main things that the UK public wanted from Brexit was control over our borders with no interference from EU bureaucrats in Brussels. They put control over immigration at the top of the list and workers from the EU now must satisfy a lot of a stringent work visa regulations. These regulations are designed to attract only the ‘brightest and the best’ from the rest of the world to have the privilege of working in the UK. There is indeed, a skills shortage list maintained by the Home Office that defines what jobs people from outside the UK can apply for. The list does not include truck drivers, nor does it include hospitality workers, residential care home staff, agricultural workers, workers in the food processing and many other areas facing a shortage of labour. This is causing problems across the UK economy just as it is emerging from the lockdown recession.

The fuel truck driver shortage is just the thin end of the wedge. Drivers can point to many reasons for the shortage: drivers retiring, unsocial hours away from family, poor facilities that make it unattractive. These systemic weaknesses are amplified by the loss of EU based drivers who have little appetite to spend days at the UK border at customs checks dealing with a ton of Brexit bureaucracy when conditions in the EU are much easier and nearer to home. On top of that we have Covid. For many months there has been no driver training and the government test centres have been closed. The supply of new drivers coming into the business stopped.

At the same time, there are plenty of other driving jobs that do not need a Heavy Goods Vehicle license or the extra training an fuel tanker driver needs before they are legal to drive on the roads. Covid has led to a huge increase in home shopping and there is a good living to be made doing short distance parcel delivery. This is a lot more attractive that long distance driving.

On top of that we have the panic buying caused by the famously excitable UK press and we have social media to spread and exaggerate every rumour.

The UK government has handled this badly. It lambasts industry, saying they should have trained more drivers, paid more, improved their conditions. It has rather grandly decided to call in the Army to lend a few drivers and told businesses to work together to get supplies to the fuel stations. They have belatedly, under a lot of pressure decided to let in a few thousand EU drivers to make up the shortage. But only temporarily, until Christmas. Unsurprisingly the reaction to this has not been very positive. There has not been queue of eager applicants to drive in the UK when there are plenty of jobs and a driver shortage in the EU.

This is just a typical British storm in a tea cup. Bonuses will be offered, pay rates hiked and eventually the tankers will get to all the fuel stations. In fact, the shortages are very localised. It will blow over in a week or so.

This sort of thing has happened before. When Tony Blair was in power in 2000 and there were sudden oil price rises, this led to protest by truck drivers outside oil refineries. The UK government got into a complete panic fanned by the press and they ran around like headless chickens not knowing quite what to do.

The current government is no better.

Their main priority is to proclaim loudly that this has nothing to do with their key flagship political project: Brexit. It is Covid what done it! Of course, the government is no way responsible for that.

There are great many structural weaknesses in the UK economy and between Covid and Brexit, many of them are going to become quite evident in the next few years. A few weeks ago, people new little about the shortage of drivers, nor did they care much about what happens in poultry processing or any of those other jobs that are difficult and poorly paid.

Now that there is line to fill their car with fuel and there are warnings that the at the availability of the Christmas Turkey is in danger. The nation is beginning to get anxious. I blame the ‘doom scrolling’ habit and social media for a lot of this.

A ‘First World’ kind of problem.

18

As an example, I worked for a large Canadian firm way back when. Starting in the 1990’s, Wall Street MBA’s started telling businesses who many headcounts they needed. (Hence the Dilbert cartoon - “I wouldn’t fire you - you’re my favorite headcount”) They would analyze the work, revenue and costs, and say what was an appropriate level on employees. This naturally skimped on reserve, so vacations, sickness, turn-over and training new hires was not part of the equation. Then they started adding to the tasks for the same number of employees - less supervision, “team leads” instead of the lower level supervisors. It wasn’t just companies like IBM and Bell spinoffs that famously axed several layers of management.

And each down cycle, they used as an opportunity to not raise wages.

then they wonder why it all falls apart.

19

Driving a tuck in the UK used to have some kind of glamour, but that’s long gone. Employers, especially the big logistics companies have de-skilled the job as much as they can. Drivers would tell you that they earned good money, but in fact, the hourly rate was often little better than the minimum wage.

If you were fortunate to work for a good employer, it was a good job, but most drivers worked long hours and spent many nights away from home, just to make ends meet. Many hauliers actively recruited East European drivers because they were cheaper.

Wages are rising rapidly, but many of those raises are temporary as employers hope things will go back to how they were.

There are huge inefficiencies in the system. When I was a driver, back in the 90s, I often spent more time sitting outside someone’s depot than I did driving. Warehouse managers had no interest in giving visiting trucks a fast turnaround and seemed to see them as cheap storage.

20

In the US, a large percentage of trucking miles are on rural highways. That’s a much easier case to solve for self-driving computers than city driving.