At Megatrans 2022, a supply chain and freight exhibition and conference in Melbourne, I had a chat with Peter Anderson, CEO of the Victorian Transport Association, about truck drivers — recruiting, attracting them, and desirable attributes.
Caroline: How hard is it to recruit truck drivers Peter? How can we attract truck drivers?
Peter: One of the biggest issues concerning truck drivers in Australia is the fact that the demand for truck drivers is increasing. So the demand for goods and services that are provided by the transport industry, especially in the road freight industry, is increasing — exponentially. Yet our resources and our ability to be able to meet the demands of the community is decreasing. We lost between 7 and 8 percent of truck drivers through the COVID process for a number of reasons. And I won’t go through those specifically but that was a decrease in our ability to be able to supply and service our customers. And a decrease in supply means an increase in price, and so prices are going up rapidly in the road freight industry; costs are going up rapidly in the road freight industry. So economics is a major part of this discussion.
Caroline: So how do we get drivers into the industry?
Peter: We’ve got to realise that driving a truck is a skill and it’s a skill that has to be taught and learned. It’s not something that just anybody can do, not anybody can drive a truck. It takes a certain amount of awareness, aptitude and attitude to be done properly and professionally. And that’s what is not recognised in the broader community or in the structures of the bureaucracy. Truck driving is treated the same as a barista — not necessarily part of a skilled and trainable process. And this is something we at the VTA are adamant about. We want to stop the process of just licencing people to drive trucks and start to train them.
Caroline: The VTA brought in a training program a few years ago didn’t it?
Peter: Yes, we run a training program now. We developed it from a Canadian program that was created in Ontario, Canada some 15 years ago after a new entrant to the country driving heavy vehicles smashed into a school bus. The truck was found to be unroadworthy, the driver was fatigued, he was overweight, and he killed nine children. Canada turned their whole system upside down after that. And they had a similar system to what we’ve got in Australia, where we, if you haven’t got a truck licence now Caroline, if you have a car licence, you can have one by lunchtime tomorrow, not a problem — $1,000 and five hours of your time and you could have a truck licence which, because a truck is a workplace, automatically makes you a professional truck driver. This is the sort of issue that we have in our industry, because it denigrates the real value of what we do. Our industry is looked upon as a bottom feeder and we’re not able to attract the right sort of people, or people that want to build a career in our industry. The average truck driver in Victoria is 57 years of age. We plan for retirement, not career development in our workforce. The issue for us is the licencing system. It stops us from attracting young people into our industry.
Caroline: I don’t undertstand. How does that stop young people from becoming a truck driver?
Peter: Because young people want to train and the current licencing system doesn’t train you. It’s all age based. You can be taught to fly a plane at 16. You can be taught to fire a gun and kill someone and get sent overseas to defend Australia at 18. But you can’t, for some reason, train 18 year olds to drive a heavy vehicle safely in the community.
Caroline: So you feel that that means that we lose all these young people to other professions?
Peter: I want to be able to stand up with Year 12 students and say: “So some of you won’t get a degree. Some of you don’t get a trade. Some of you might like to come into the logistics industry and drive a truck and within two to three months be earning $80,000 a year; within three to five years be earning $120,000 a year; own your first house at 28; own your first investment property at 35. Is there anybody here that would like to come into our industry and build a career?” And I’m sure that the young people coming out of school would be delighted to come into our industry, learn the complexities and the nuances and actually build a fantastic life for themselves.
Caroline: You think that system is going to work?
Peter: We’re pushing for it.
Caroline: How long have you been pushing?
Peter: Eight years. The frustrating part for me is the fact that in 1996 the National Road Transport Commission, which is now the NTC, was made to do a study and a report on heavy vehicle licencing systems in Australia. In 2013, the COAG of transport ministers got together and said we want to review the heavy vehicle licencing system in Australia. Austroads did a report. Five years later, in 2018, COAG was presented with that report and they still couldn’t get any of the recommendations implemented in 2020. Austroads were forced to do another study. Another two-year study and it will hopefully be coming out by the end of this year. It will once again look at heavy vehicle licencing and a national framework. I’m sorry, it’s a state based responsibility. There’s no champions federally, because they don’t want to take it on and so the issue just keeps being rolled over.
Caroline: Who is on board with you to upend the current licensing system?
Peter: The QTA — Queensland Trucking Association, the NTRTA — Northern Territory Road Transport Association, Western Roads Federation — WA transport association; all of the associations want it. It’s the bureaucracy that’s stalling. It’s the bureaucrats and this innate inertia that they have towards driving change. And this change isn’t about just getting young people in, it’ll change the nature of the way people see our industry. If we can get it, people will start to see our industry as something that people want to get into. And all of a sudden they’ll stop looking at their truck drivers being someone that’s halfway between being a drug addict and going to jail, which is the general malaise that’s out there.
Caroline: As you said not everybody can be a truck driver, so what are the attributes that make a good truck driver?
Peter: We look for awareness, aptitude, and attitude. And the big one is attitude. So if you don’t have the right attitude to drive a heavy vehicle, you’re dangerous. We don’t want to train you. You need to have the awareness of what’s around you and the dimensions of the vehicle you’re travelling in. You need to be able to adapt yourself to the type of load you have. A concrete truck doesn’t carry cement and a milk tanker doesn’t carry fuel. A truck doesn’t only carry pallets. They all carry individual types of freight. What I’m trying to say is: As a truck driver, you have to be cognisant of what the freight is, what it does in transit, how to manage it, what it does when you actually get to the place where you have got to pick up or deliver, because you’ve got to secure it and make sure you understand what the parameters are. And those kinds of things have to be taught. They’re not. We don’t want them to be taught over five or 10 or 15 years of experience. We want them to be taught from the first day that people come into the industry.
