Recruitment crisis looms in the trucking industry, with an old workforce and many driver due to retire

Adding to the problem are the on-road risks faced by truck drivers having to deal with other road users, with the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator reporting that in 61.6 per cent of crashes involving a light and heavy vehicle, the car driver was at fault.

A forecasting report commissioned in 2018 - long before the 2020 COVID lockdown generated a massive spike in online and delivery sales - revealed the extent of the looming crisis ahead for the transport and logistics industry.

Although the workforce has grown by 17 per cent in the past 10 years, the number of workers over 40 years old grew at twice the rate of those younger than 40, the report found.

More than 80 per cent of employers within the transport and logistics industry reported a skills shortage in the 12 months preceding the report, with experienced truck drivers in particularly high demand.

"With a large proportion of workers set to retire in the next two decades, the industry currently faces a very serious recruitment challenge," the report found, revealing the the average age of truck drivers in Australia is 47, while the average age of bus and coach drivers 10 years older.

"Attracting, training and retaining young workers to undertake a career in the transport and logistics industry is proving to be a challenge.

"Stakeholders report that part of the difficulty attracting young drivers is that the occupation isn't seen as a professional position; careers such as bus and truck driving are often perceived negatively.

"Coupled with the industry's average perception in the broader community, this amounts to a significant barrier.

"Compounding the issue is the increased use of sub-contracting and other forms of employment within the industry, as well as career progression being limited in driving roles and career pathways not well understood."

Identified as key issues for growing the workforce were:

Issues within the transport and associated supply chain of goods into supermarkets came to a head less than a month later when the highly contagious Omicron variant of the COVID-19 caused major disruptions across networks, generating up to 20 per cent absenteeism at grocery distribution centres across the country and creating major delays to truck deliveries. Panic buying and shortages of meat, toilet paper and analgesics resulted.

BLAKE's LEGACY:

In late December 2021, the Federal government announced a new, nationally agreed truck driving "apprenticeship", a Certificate III in Driving Operations, recognised as a necessity to bolster workforce participation.

However, getting more workers to join the transport industry presented a further challenge because the new certification has to be delivered by the state-run Technical and Further Education bodies. This requires signed off by the individual states and territories, and delivered on a state-by-state basis. The Federal government can provide funding, but has little say on timing and delivery.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison even waded into the skills shortfall discussion in December, describing how "there couldn't be a more important job than getting food on the table to millions of families or delivering COVID-19 vaccines to doctors, hospitals and pharmacies across Australia".

Truck drivers have been calling for industry change for years, with low pay and 60-hour working weeks commonplace in the long-haul industry, combined with an inability for drivers to get home to see their families as often as they would like identified as key reasons for people leaving the industry.

The so-called "outer" limit on weekly driving hours now sits at 72 hours.

In October, the National Transport Commission resisted a reduction in weekly hours for drivers, describing the current standards to combat fatigue as "fit for purpose".

The Federal government backed that decision, saying there were sufficient existing mechanisms to combat driver fatigue and that "a change to working hours would have impacted drivers' incomes, the movement of freight and operations of transport businesses right around the country".

However, the Transport Workers Union says the industry would remain an "undesirable career" without the regulatory solutions to make the job safer and more worker-friendly.

It says the government' s decisions not to establish and independent body to create and enforce standards will continue to create unsafe work practices. The union says demand throughout the pandemic has exacerbated unrealistic deadlines and pressures on trucking supply chains.

A recent TWU survey of 1100 truck drivers found that nearly half those questioned knew a driver killed on the job. Owner drivers reported taking unnecessary risks to stay in business and three-quarters had completed a "run" that resulted in no profit.

TWU assistant national secretary Nick Macintosh says reforms are needed urgently in the industry because of the "wealthy retailers, manufacturers and oil companies squeezing supply chains and making trucking so unsafe".

"An apprenticeship scheme won't work if it simply asks young people to jump into the graves of truckies killed, only to face the same deadly pressures as their predecessors," he said.

"There wouldn't be a driver shortage if there wasn't such a deficit of decent work, proper consultation, and reform to address the 'Amazon Effect' of cost-cutting and exploitation in trucking supply chains".

The industry said that fatigue-related crashes are rising fast and suspected to have been the cause of a fiery crash which killed two drivers south of Port Macquarie recently, and a devastating rollover which killed a truck driver in Lameroo, SA.

Numbers of experienced drivers are at such marginal levels that as drivers were forced to quarantine due the Omicron wave of the pandemic, until April 29 the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator now allows drivers with expired medical clearances due to breaches of fatigue management protocols to drive for a further six months "noting any expired medicals to be obtained as soon as reasonably practicable".

In-service roller brake testing, which is an important tool for testing truck brake performance, has also received a "temporary relaxation of calibration requirements" from the regulator.