Don’t Get Caught Short of Drivers this Christmas – Plan Ahead!
Ten Live understand effective logistics planning is crucial to overall success. Plan ahead to ensure that you have enough people to fill crucial driving jobs this festive season.
Driver Shortage
The logistics industry is one of the UK’s largest and brings over £70bn into our economy. Yet every year logistics companies, hauliers, retailers and supermarkets hauliers, continue to struggle to recruit the necessary amount of staff to fill crucial driving jobs. In 2015 RHA’s chief executive, Richard Burnett, said:
“We are short of between 45,000 and 50,000 drivers and the situation is getting worse. Thousands of older drivers are leaving the industry and younger people can’t afford the £3,000 it costs to get a truck licence.” (Click here for full article)
This year, the the HGV driver population has expanded by 15,000 – just 5%. The strain on the industry throughout the year is already a continuous challenge, so come peak Christmas season if companies are not well prepared they could find themselves in difficulty filling driving jobs.
Peak Problems
A November 2016 survey has furthermore shown that Christmas deliveries in the UK could be hampered by a shortage of lorry drivers as the potential pool of workers has shrunk to its lowest level since records began in 2005.
A lack of truck drivers has long been an issue for UK businesses as the popularity of the profession has decreased among British workers. But this year the problem has worsened – driver shortages are already being forecast as a “significant problem” in the run-up to Christmas.
Solving the Driver Shortage
One way to counter the impact of the driver shortage is to look at increasing sourcing HGV drivers to recruit outside of the UK to fill HGV driver jobs. FTA Deputy Chief Executive James Hookham said in 2015:
“The [FTA] report highlights the industry’s reliance on EU nationals, with more than 30,000 – 10% of the entire driver workforce – currently employed in the UK.” (Click here for full article)
This is a huge increase in EU drivers within the UK haulage industry rising from 8.4% in 2015. This is something Ten Live driving recruitment specialists are already aware of and so we have a large pool of both UK and EU drivers to readily tap into.
Helping you Plan Ahead
Ten Live work in partnership with some of the UK’s largest logistic companies and top retail and supermarket brands to plan ahead and ensure our clients have sufficient drivers to deal with the peak Christmas season.
Our driver recruiters are highly successful in helping clients plan ahead and in providing ad-hoc, immediate HGV driver solutions – they will go beyond the norm to ensure our clients have HGV drivers to deal with the yearly driver shortage in the run-up to Christmas.
At Ten Live we have a large pool of qualified, highly-skilled and experienced Class 1, 2 and 7.5T drivers from UK and EU with excellent retention rates, van drivers, warehouse and support staff available now 24/7 to fill your driver jobs.
Our driving clients really rate us:
“Excellent service 100% of the time. If I come across anyone looking for an agency yours will be the one I recommend” – Leading UK general haulage company
“Fantastic service that is delivered by Ten Live’s unique way of assessing and assigning the right people to the right task – this minimises our staff turnover and maximises our labour productivity” – Top 10 global transportation provider
Call +44 1236 702007 or email supplychain@tenlivegroup.com to discuss your driver peak requirements or logistics/supply chain resourcing requirements today.
Sources:
http://www.director.co.uk/blog-will-driver-shortages-spoil-christmas-20141-2/
http://www.fta.co.uk/export/sites/fta/_galleries/downloads/campaigns/the-driver-shortage-report.pdf
