The whole driver shortage is also a massive red herring. There are something like 300,000 more HGV license holders than there are vacancies. The question is not where the workers have gone, but why they don't want to drive.
I'm sure Scania agrees pay is one aspect, but who here would want to work any random 5 days from 7 as most jobs offer right now. No weekend premium, no bank holiday premium, no bonus for unsocial hours. No decent facilities on the road. Very little genuinely safe and secure parking. Banned outright from parking in Kent outside of expensive and undersized truck parks. 15 hour shifts 3 days a week, with as little as 9 hours off, then another 3x13 hour shifts. Up to 21 hours duty time if double manning, again with 9 hours off. Locked in tiny stuffy waiting rooms sitting on a plastic chair for 3 hours while your unloaded because your banned from sitting in your cab. Banned form the using the toilets at many site you deliver to. Turned away if your early, rejected if your late, oh, and banned from parking on the very industrial estates your delivering to. Tachographs, driving facing cameras, Microlise monitoring. Some pointy shoe wearing office clerk telling you how you should be driving when they've never been in a truck. We are hated if we drive during the day, we are hated if we deliver at night.
I certainly wouldn't choose this industry if I was starting out my working life now.
