Truck driving is one of Australia’s top five occupations with a skill shortage. More than 26,000 positions are unfilled. The skill shortage has serious consequences.
Trucking business owners and managers tell me they have equipment standing idle. They are not investing in new, safer and more productive trucks because they are not certain they can find employees to drive them.
At the same time, potential drivers are missing out on opportunities for great jobs or even long-term careers.
You’ve only got to look at our 2025 Professional Driver of the Year, Brad Train, to see where trucking can take you.
In his early 20s, Brad worked on a cattle station in the Northern Territory and watched the road trains head past to a more interesting life.
Today, he’s renowned for floating heavy equipment and delivering it in immaculate condition. He checks and mentors new drivers and, in his spare time, has become an accomplished Muay Thai fighter.
Now there’s a career. It certainly beats responding to endless emails hoping they find you well, because truck driving can offer a life of travel, adventure and earn-while-you-learn opportunities, without years of study and crushing student debt.
With the support of our Foundation Sponsors, bp, NTI and Volvo Trucks, the ATA has launched the first wave of our new career fact sheets, to provide students, parents and career counsellors with information about how truck driving jobs compare.
We launched the fact sheets in mid-August at the 2025 Canberra CareersXpo, attended by thousands of high school and secondary college students from the ACT and regional NSW.
With our friends from Transport Women Australia, Beck’s Transport Training and Divall’s Earthmoving and Bulk Haulage, our team handed out fact sheets to close to 500 students.
The first fact sheet, ‘Earn More Before You’re 25’, compares truck driving to other career options out of year 12 like becoming a car mechanic, a police officer or doing a business degree.
It points out that truck drivers can earn $88,000 a year or more in their 20s, with a quick start and ample overtime for long distance drivers.
In contrast, first year apprentice mechanics earn $29,500 a year, and fully qualified car mechanics earn some $53,700.
An early career business graduate might earn about the same amount as a truck driver, but that requires three years of full-time study and $51,000 in student debt that needs to be paid back.
Our second fact sheet, Your future path, traces a driver’s journey from a car licence to a multi-combination licence and their minimum hourly earnings. The hourly award rates start off at more than $26 an hour for an LR or MR driver, but more experienced drivers with an MC licence earn much more.
In addition to the fact sheets, our InRoads Workforce website features information about how to recruit more broadly.
Australia is changing; employers need to look beyond the drivers who are already in the industry to recruiting and training staff who are keen to make a go of it.
The site includes our inclusive recruitment booklet, which features guidance about how to write job ads that attract people who are new to the industry and how to run better interviews. It even includes a job ad template.
Read more news from the ATA.
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