I have done a lot of contracts for transport companies and my uncle has driven trucks too. In Australia we have a MASSIVE shortage, but they regulate against the transport industry constantly. Which has driven companies to only hiring those whith experience. Which means no one who is new to truck driving can get in. But we have a shortage.
Of course, you could go for one of the shit house companies that sub contract to indians. Theyre the guys that are always smashing their trucks into low bridges. BUT WE HAVE A TRUCK DRIVER SHORTAGE
Sounds like you have an entirely artificial shortage, which i would hardly consider a real shortage. Young intelligent people are blocked because they have no experience, is there training? Is it prohibitively expensive? Do the trucking companies do ANYTHING like paid training, education assistance, etc.?
Theres NEVER a shortage in people who will excel at a given job, they are simply blocked from it for one reason or another; no "entry level" jobs to get the experience, thats not a worker shortage. No affordable training available and the companies dont help in any way, not a worker shortage. Companies dont want to lose any amount of profits in order to create the next generation workforce, so they whine and cry and hire foreigners who got the experience in shitholestan driving a mobile junkyard full of goats.
Employment here works different than most other countries. There are serious discrimination and chain of responsibility laws. If someone dies on site due to negligence, then the supervisor is fined, the manager is fined more, the executives are fined even more and the directors blown out of the water. There are plenty of cheap training courses from all over the place, but no big company wants to take the risk because the chain of responsibility is larger. However, the smaller shittier companies are really shit and its hard to work with them, even if you are new to the industry.
But, I did forget to leave one thing out in my original post. I noticed that a lot of entry level people are moving into local courier work and working their way up from small vehicles and vans into light trucks. While driving a 4 tonne truck is not really comparable to a B double, it seems to be giving some people some chances. I also notice that there are very few foreigners in local courier businesses.
So the mailman needs to move up to semi driver. It does just sound like the shortage is a cause of over regulation more than a shortage of people capable and willing. I agree with management being held responsible in situations where they actually are, like poor training or bad policy, or being cheap and failing to keep up maintenance on the fleet or whatever it may be, but if the driver just sucks lifes dick one day and runs over a bunch of people or something, that might not exactly be something management should be fined for (unless a certain group of people is statistically running people over in trucks, then they should maybe be held responsible if they keep using said group of people)
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