Lorry Drivers . . . an’ all that

An interesting thread on Twitter by someone calling himself (herself ?) Laurie Driver . . .

Laurie Driver – Low Skilled (Key)Worker
@justsnoozing

Let’s deal with this stupidity that says because we have more unemployed than vacancies in logistics all the unemployed can fill the vacancies we have.

As with any job, you need candidates living in the area of the vacancies. You then need them available for the hours required if the job. For haulage that is 24/7 with shifts up to 15hrs, possibly with unplanned nights out, weekend working & unsociable start/finish times.

You also need to understand that there is no such job as “lorry driver” rather there are hundreds of different jobs that involve the driving of a lorry, so to reduce them to just one job title is misleading. Many of these vacancies are highly specialised, such as fuel tankers,

New drivers simply wouldn’t be appropriate to fill the vacancy. Even if an experienced driver would want to take this role on, they’d need additional qualifications to do so. The licence alone isn’t sufficient.

For an unemployed person to get into the industry will require £000’s, time, skill & aptitude. Each of these criteria will rule out potential candidates.

Some hauliers can’t afford to take on newly qualified drivers because of the insurance premiums that would attract, so again, a newly qualified driver isn’t the solution for that particular vacancy.

Finally, even if a candidate finds a job that suits them & can leap all the hurdles before them, the test pass rate is only around 50%. This is a great industry to work in for the right people, but that pool of potential drivers is quite small, hence why we need such a large pool of candidates.

Laurie Driver has a somewhat cryptic bio, so I have no further details about him or her, but perhaps we are supposed to assume that he/she is telling us what his/her job is.

About Ian

Retired Clergyman, and former RAF person. Lives in Kirkcudbright, SW Scotland. One wife. Two children, three grandchildren and two great grandchildren scattered across UK, Europe and the USA. Long time member of the European Movement, and latterly of the Scottish National Party. ""Here's to us; who is as good as us? Damn few, and they're all dead"
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