The UK road haulage industry has been battling with significant driver shortages for decades. The crisis peaked in 2021 during the pandemic when the Road Haulage Association (RHA) reported a staggering shortfall of over 100,000 qualified HGV drivers.

The situation has eased with the latest estimates suggesting the shortage could be down to around 50,000, but the crisis is far from over and may even be worsening again. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there were 6,000 fewer delivery and courier drivers in the UK in the year to March 2023 compared to the previous year.

Driver demographics

The greatest challenges are an ageing workforce, a severe lack of younger drivers and limited acceptance of diversity:

• 55% of HGV drivers in the UK are aged between 50 and 65
• The average age of HGV drivers is 51
• Fewer than 1% of drivers are under 25
• Only 4% are from ethnic minorities

This means that a significant proportion of the workforce will retire over the next decade and opportunities to replace them with younger and more diverse drivers are being missed.

Recruitment & retention issues

Negative industry perceptions

The role is known for long and antisocial working hours, poor roadside facilities, demanding work conditions and comparatively low salaries. Employers are seen, rightly or otherwise as paying little attention to career development and training, or to drivers’ work-life balance.

Brexit

Post-Brexit changes to immigration rules saw up to 20,000 EU-national drivers leave the UK, with many citing uncertainty over their rights to live and work in the UK as the main reason.

Additionally, the increased complexity of post-Brexit paperwork and customs procedures has made the UK less attractive to foreign drivers, who can often get similar pay and better working conditions elsewhere in Europe.

Covid 19

The pandemic caused widespread disruption within the industry, leading the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency to cancel over 40,000 HGV driving tests. Additionally, many lifelong drivers chose to retire early during the pandemic due to health concerns and changing work conditions. The increased demand for delivery services caused by changes to shopping habits has intensified the need for HGV drivers, further exacerbating the pre-Covid shortage.

What is being done to address the labour shortages?

Key measures include:

Government initiatives

To address the HGV driver shortage, the government has introduced 33 new initiatives and campaigns aimed at alleviating the issue.

Improving HGV roadside facilities

The government has allocated up to £100 million to enhance roadside facilities for HGV drivers. This investment aims to improve rest stops and amenities, making the profession more appealing and comfortable for drivers. This follows extensive campaigning from the RHA.

Extending the Bootcamp training scheme

The government has recently extended the Bootcamp scheme, which trains new HGV drivers and helps to fill vacancies, until February 2026. This offers an end-to-end programme lasting 16 weeks and provides anyone who already holds a full UK driving licence with the chance to gain a fully subsidised Cat C or C + E licence. The scheme has so far trained more than 11,000 people to become HGV drivers since it was introduced in 2022.

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships are a key part of driver recruitment, but concerns persist about the flexibility of the Apprenticeship Levy arrangements as well as the willingness of smaller haulage firms to release their apprentices for their off-the-job training. While apprenticeships may be successful in producing more rounded and better experienced drivers than the shorter bootcamps, the issue is the small volume of drivers they produce relative to the overall shortage.

There is also a need for the Apprenticeship Levy to offer greater flexibility of training courses, so that employers can choose from either apprenticeships or shorter courses.

Improving pay rates

The widespread acceptance of the inevitability of a tight and highly competitive overall labour market has prompted an increase in driver wages, which is helping to resolve the driver shortage. By offering more competitive salaries, the industry aims to attract new entrants and retain existing drivers.

More mechanics are needed too

The understandable focus on the driver shortage problem has meant that the difficulty of also having too few suitably skilled mechanics has gone under the radar. Haulage businesses are struggling to recruit and train vehicle technicians and are reporting delays with maintenance providers. With the high vehicle technician apprenticeship costs rising but funding not keeping pace, some colleges and training providers have pulled out of the market.

What more does the industry need?

The RHA has identified a number of additional areas where action would contribute to reversing the labour shortages:

• Raise the sector’s profile with young people by developing a Logistics T-Level exam course covering the global supply chain, sustainable logistics, different transport modes, regulations and warehousing.
• Reform the Apprenticeship Levy to provide more flexibility.
• Extend the Skills Bootcamp to include Cat D licences, tyre fitting and vehicle inspections
• Increase funding for heavy vehicle technician apprenticeships
• Plan for the green skills of the future

Is there any real progress?

We last reviewed the labour force issues in road haulage in December 2023. Since then, the only significant developments have been a mixture of positive and negative.

On the upside, the extension of the bootcamp scheme until 2026 is welcome. However, this comes against the background of the ONS figures on lower numbers of HGV drivers in the national workforce last year. The list of government initiatives is long, but few are recent and while many are helpful, their potential to alleviate shortages is marginal in some instances.

It seems achieving the required levels of labour in the industry will be a long haul along an uncertain and bumpy road.
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