Lorry driver shortage

Muck Spreader

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Limousin
Yes I had one. Predictable Gov letter impersonal and no contact details for the undersigned

I found the Baroness' email address and sent a mail

Dear Lady Vere





You wrote me a letter imploring me to consider driving trucks using my LGV Class 2 entitlement

Predictably as with all such letters they are impersonal and contain no contact details for the undersigned.

Successive Governments and the Civil Service have presided over the demise of the truck transport sector such that most who could drive a truck are no longer interested.

The Government GP contract means that a GP practice can wrack whatever fee they decide is "commercial" for a rudimentary medical every five years. For me this is £85 currently. The desktop exercise is an absolute joke compared with the thorough occupational health assessment I undertook with the Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service. The latter was free and both should be seen as a public service. I decided I was not going to be taxed by a private monopolistic medical practice to renew my licence. I still carry the entitlement

The introduction of a compulsory sit along 35 hour CPC with no core syllabus requirement or outcome every five years is a further joke. What does it bring if you don't even need to prove knowledge of current hours regulations. As I'm not a driver I've never undertaken it

I gained my CPC in Road Haulage Operations (National) in 1981 , actually as part of a college thesis preparation but drove in the early Eighties and ran my own wagon in the mid 2000's. I gained a pretty good insight in to what makes driving so unattractive. Some are corporate attitudes towards drivers and the haulage sector but a lot can be laid at Government's door.

These days tramping is very unattractive with hardly any secure, clean overnight parking places. Cartels fixing crazy motorway overnight fees and overpriced dirty food and facilities - have you compared this with French Aire de Parking facilities for example? Section 106 agreements requiring all new RDC and mega warehouse planning applications to facilitate a truck park could easily be achieved as a start

All Metropolitan truck routes are fraught with time pressures / restrictions imposed by central and local government without any intelligent acknowledgement that we all require goods moved by trucks. Furthermore I would never wish for anyone to be harmed by an LGV but there is no control or policing to stop cyclists undertaking trucks at junctions etc

The road network has been chronically underfunded for years; I'd even venture to suggest not many new roads need building just the current network brought up to standard. The crazy utilities protocol to close roads and cause massive diverts with no check as to how long the road closure is actually required rather than permitted causes massive fuel and CO2 pollution and brings nothing forward for road worker safety. De-heat the South East, mandate bypasses and other measures to increase the number of roads being dualled, drop lanes not junctions. These are not new things but folks who've never driven a truck should understand and respect

I wish you well with your quest
Very good letter, these people are just so out of touch with the real world of work. You did forget to mention the little extras 💋;) you get at an Aire de Parking nowadays.
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
Very good letter, these people are just so out of touch with the real world of work. You did forget to mention the little extras 💋;) you get at an Aire de Parking nowadays.
More importantly I hummed and harred about mentioning the pettiness of some DVSA regulation but in the end decided that would just give her ammo about society needing safety etc etc
 

nivilla1982

Member
Livestock Farmer
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DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I don’t quite understand this driver shortage. We have never seen anything other than British drivers collect and deliver stuff here. I haven’t heard of one retiring or leaving the industry over the last year. They are still working. None of the firms I deal with have lorries without drivers so what’s going on?
There seems to be a shortage of veg pickers but from what I saw none who lived here was “forced” to go home. I know several German and Polish nationals who are still working here without a problem.
Is it just that foreign workers aspirations have been raised by improved conditions back home so they don’t need to scivvy here or it isn’t so financially attractive due to a levelling up across the EU. And covid hasn’t helped.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Location
southwest
Due to post Brexit disputes between the UK, the Irish Government and the rest of the EU member states, a "miscommunication" seems to have occurred in the paperwork for the issuing of Visas intended to ease the HGV driver shortage.

It's not a major problem, but truck foot pedals will need to be altered as all incoming staff will be wearing clown shoes.
 

JeepJeep

Member
Trade
I don’t quite understand this driver shortage. We have never seen anything other than British drivers collect and deliver stuff here. I haven’t heard of one retiring or leaving the industry over the last year. They are still working. None of the firms I deal with have lorries without drivers so what’s going on?
There seems to be a shortage of veg pickers but from what I saw none who lived here was “forced” to go home. I know several German and Polish nationals who are still working here without a problem.
Is it just that foreign workers aspirations have been raised by improved conditions back home so they don’t need to scivvy here or it isn’t so financially attractive due to a levelling up across the EU. And covid hasn’t helped.


The bulk of it will be the housesofshite to work for,. The ones doing Supermarket Trunks. Nothing But RDC work. The onces carrying bottles into the plant and product to an RDC
The ones that have grown rapidly since they've had access to cheaper labour. They are the main ones in the press whining.
 

Muck Spreader

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Limousin
Nobody was deported. EU Immigrants were offered British citizenship in plenty of time.
We still have thousands of immigrants arriving here every month including across the channel in inflatables. Can’t they be set to work? Benefit for them and us.
I’ll bet in 6 months we will have an unemployment crisis according to the media.
Approximately 145,000 EU citizens have been refused the right to remain in the UK.
 

Werzle

Member
Location
Midlands
One of latvians got this but he doesn't have a current licence as he has to resit for an artic test or something!
Spoke to 2 truckers in the past week and they were on £10/h basic and not a lot of overtime. I thought you could name your price?
Mate was chatting to a driver yesterday who had handed his notice in which seemed crazy when you would think drivers could name there price, he said the real reasons were not being mentioned on the news. The list of his moans as follows- Poor wages, poor work/ life balance, Many lorry firms will not pay for drivers to rest up in secure compounds, this week many had had the fuel stolen while they slept. Sick of using laybys as toilets, no showers etc. CPC's, medicals, limit on driver hours have all taken a toll. Not being allowed to be self employed anymore caused many eu drivers to go home, not brexit.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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