The Result of Low Quality Training

Everywhere in the trucking industry operations are having to cope with new employees whose skill levels are inadequate as the result of low quality training.We are seeing low levels of competency in drivers who have been tested and are supposedly ready to work in the trucking industry. This is a problem which is coming at a time when there are drastic skill shortages everywhere.

I was struck by the decision by NatRoad to pull together information about the levels of in competencies found in drivers arriving armed with a driving license but unable to do the job of a truck driver. Click here for a link to the survey.

It is about time that the problem was quantified. If we quantify it and it is presented to the powers that be then, it should be incumbent on them to do something about it. Instead of making the trucking industry continually struggle to find enough drivers to get the job done. 

On top of the problem of difficulty in actually getting trucks every week I talk to trucking operators who tell me that they actually have trucks parked up parked up because they can’t find drivers good enough to drive them.

This is not just a demographic problem. This is a systemic failure on the part of the powers that be to correctly regulate and set standards for training of potential truck drivers in our industry. 

The failing on the part of the trucking industry is that we have not made the any of the professions working in the trucking industry attractive enough to pull in more people than we are currently getting. 

Therefore, it would seem that there are two things that which need to happen as soon as humanly possible. The training regime for truck drivers needs to be improved to the point where if somebody turns up in a trucking company yard with a piece of paper saying they’re competent to drive a truck, then they actually are competent to drive that truck. 

We also need the trucking industry to look at itself, work collectively and come up with more initiatives to make the trucking industry more attractive to those people who are currently not putting it on their list of possible careers.

If we don’t fix it then the supermarket shortages we have had in the last couple of years will become normality and the status of the trucking industry will remain in the doldrums.