With Arla Foods now advising there could well be a shortage of milk products in Britains supermarkets in the coming weeks due to the current shortage of HGV drivers, it would seem that matters are fast spiralling down in the UK's road transport industry. Britain's major distributors have created employment conditions so poor for drivers in road haulage and distribution that many have left the industry and very few come forward to replace them.
I was an HGV driver from the mid-1960s until the mid-1980s. In the nineteen sixties it was my dream job and something I had always wanted to do since my teenage years. At that time heavy goods driving was a profession that many spent their entire adult life carrying out. With no mobile phones or vehicle tracking drivers once they departed their depots were left to manage the vehicle and any problems with deliveries or delays, the driver had to sort out on his own.
Drivers were respected and felt they were appreciated by their employers who allowed them to book into bed and breakfast accommodation at night where there was good toilet and washing facilities etc
However, all that changed when agency working to become legal in the 1970s. Road transport companies and Distributors soon used those agencies to provide them with drivers who were on very much reduced conditions. Drivers were also told to sleep in the vehicle cabs where, obviously, there are no toilet or washing facilities.
Throughout the 1990s as the agency hold on driver employment increased many experienced British HGV drivers left the industry creating a shortage. The agencies seen the solution to that problem by encouraging Polish drivers to work in Britain and paying them even less than the British drivers. However, those Polish drivers soon realised they were being shafted and as conditions improved in their home country they returned, again leaving a shortage of drivers
The agencies then seen the answer to that problem as encouraging Romanian drivers to come and work in Britain and again paying less than British drivers still in the industry. However, those Romanian drivers soon realised they were being shafted and many soon left Britain, ironically with many going to work in Poland.
Brexit, among other things, now means that European Drivers no longer wish to come to Britain even as part of a scheduled truck journey and that has created the very serious situation in Britains road transport industry that now may well impact us all.
What I find now so disgusting is that the major hauliers, supermarket companies and manufacturers among others are asking the government to step in to help them, when they have abdicated their responsibilities for such essential workers to their businesses to outside agencies for many years with no regard whatsoever to what was going on within those agencies.
In my view the government should tell those such as Arla, Tesco, Shell and others, "you created this problem, you sort it out, and with your own money.