Every week in my job, items come across my desk and as a general rule they seem to be both positive and negative stories on an equal basis. However, there is a divide between reality and perception. Reality is what actually happens, in fact, something which is quantifiable and measurable, whereas perception is a very different beast.
A number of people who have been working in the trucking industry for a long time have talked to me about their perceptions and their resignation that the industry is getting worse. Not only are they thinking about getting out of the business, they actually are getting out of the business and moving away from it. They are taking a career which has served them well over a long period, and putting it in the too hard basket.
This disillusionment with people drifting away from the industry would not be a problem if we had a ready supply of keen young people chomping at the bit, wanting to get into the trucking industry, to innovate, to move it forward and to have a good time.
The problem is, that is not the case, there is not a queue of people around the corner who would like a job working in a trucking business. Everybody in the country is struggling to get people engaged with what the trucking industry does and interested in pursuing life in the trucking world as a career.
We have to look at a new paradigm, the source of young people coming into the trucking industry in the past was quite often youngsters from country areas or poorer backgrounds who were looking to just get out of where they were, and go and see the world.
Those yearnings to get out there and on the road are not the same, these days. The current generation do have travel available to them and can see the world even if it is via their mobile phone, on Instagram and Facebook.
Their parents generation have been able to give their children a relatively privileged life with good holidays, a nice place to live. Those parents have also aspired for their children to move up in the world and not take on some of those professions which are regarded as not quite so desirable. Unfortunately, truck driving is often perceived to be in that less desirable category.
There is no smart or easy solution. The trucking industry as a whole needs to work together to come up with a sophisticated way of realigning the perceptions of the people of Australia when they’re thinking about the trucking industry, while there is a dire shortage of labour.
On top of this we have a system which has inadequate training of drivers and inadequate licensing of drivers in this country.
It doesn’t matter where you source your drivers, whether it is from the younger generation leaving school in the next 10 years or immigrants coming into Australia to make a better life for themselves. The most important thing is that all of those people who do go into the trucking industry and do get out on the road are properly trained and able to improve the image of the industry and not denigrate it, as some of the more irresponsible operators have tended to do in the past.
