No it’s not that mate, fuel tanker drivers are paid way above your ordinary lorry drivers, 2 lads I know drive the tanker lorries and they reckon there is a queue of drivers waiting for any lad to leave, wait until fuel reaches £1.45/1.47 and hey presto there won’t be a driver shortage then. We continually get took in by the thieving bastards.
That's exactly why it's happening imho. First it was food, then CO2, now fuel. Companies desperate to get back to their slave wage model.
Part of the problem is that lorry drivers have an average age into their mid-fifties by which time they're often crippled with back problems etc. I'm sure Covid has prompted early retirement, illness, even death among many of the elderly drivers. The intake of young drivers has been poor for years and the huge increase of online shopping and food deliveries has made the situation worse ... ... why drive a truck around, sometimes staying out overnight, when you can whizz around town in a nice little Transit. And now that many thousands of foreign truck drivers have gone home, some never to return, the situation has rapidly deteriorated. It won't get better any time soon.
Tanker drivers have never been paid slave wages mate they are on a right wad so they don’t want them standing about, they just want the price to rocket.
. why drive a truck around, sometimes staying out overnight, when you can whizz around town in a nice little Transit. because they are on about 3 times what you get driving a tranny van with 500 drops threw at you every day.
Its an ageing workforce in the construction industry too. Until recently, part of my job took me to building sites regularly, where a lot of the workforce were from central/eastern Europe. I heard the owners of a peanut products company saying they found it hard to find people to fill the roles they needed. If British citizens were happy to take some of these jobs, would it go some way to solving some of the problems that people highlight? Maybe I'm naive but I can't help but think that it might.
So sad when you have to start with the childish name calling , I'll quite happily have a discussion with any fully grown adult on here whatever their opinions are as that is what a forum is all about. However if you have to become abusive to get your point across then you really are just a waste space, says the person who claims anyone that votes tory is a racist. Sad man
If I can just put my own thoughts on here being one of these hgv drivers that are being talked about. Yes the tanker drivers either fuel or chemicals are on another level wage wise than other drivers but its the haulage companies that are causing this problem. For far too long they've been paying peanuts to drivers because of the foreign drivers coming over to do the work, now that they have all gone home it's not so much as shortage of drivers it's the companies unwilling to pay the wages to the the drivers. I know a lot of hgv drivers that won't come back into the job until these companies start paying up. I've just got a £2 an hour wage rise as I work for a company who has recognised this but many many more won't budge and until they do then this will always be a problem
Reading what the head of the European transport says it isn’t going to happen, as there is the same shortage of drivers in Europe as what there is here, and it’s nothing to do with drivers going home. On bbc news this morning.
It’s a strange one the lack of fuel tanker drivers as nearly any other lorry driver would love to step up to that job so they should never have a shortage. What do you think it is mate?
Part of the conundrum is that the PM, and others, were totally opposed to Brexit so years of contingency planning time was lost. It's now as if we were chucked out of Europe overnight and scrambling to get organised. They probably didn't believe we'd vote to leave, who knows. This situation get better with these panic measures even if they bring the army as Shapps has suggested ... ... the reality is that things will become worse and we'll take the blame for daring to fuel up in case it does.
Don’t think it’s something most drivers would want to do really, me personally I wouldn’t and lots the same. Got to get more qualifications to do it also and the fact we do enough already puts me off. It all comes down to companies not paying the wages to entice professional drivers back. If the government want to do something then the first thing they need to do is talk with them and sort something out
Don’t think brexit has anything to do with the shortage mate plenty of qualified drivers just needing the extra incentive to come back and dare I say easier working conditions. For too long companies have took the piss out of the drivers, long hours, doing 2/3 working men’s jobs loading and unloading their own trailers. Hgv driving should mean one thing, driving.
The Road Haulage Association claims around 20,000 European drivers have left the UK for "Brexit reasons". Marco Digioia, general secretary of the European Road Haulers Association, said: “I expect many drivers will not return to the UK even if the UK Government allows them to.” Seriously, what are all these 'qualified drivers', you mention, doing while they're waiting for these extra incentives.
For me mate if the government start with the companies over here to entice British drivers back they’ll be no need to ask for eu drivers to return. At the end of the day there’s a reason why British drivers are staying away from the jobs and it all comes down to wages and working conditions. Being paid £10.00 an hr is not an incentive when you can get that stacking shelves in supermarkets and working in McDonalds. It takes a hell of amount of training to get to drive lorries and it doesn’t stop there, you’ve got to get your cpc also. Me personally I believe no class 1 driver should be under £15 an hour
