Opinion: One real-world reason why it’s hard to get drivers

This is a recent, true story of a young driver’s career that was nipped in the bud. Only the names have been changed.

Barry didn’t leave school with a passion for truck driving – he was set upon a life in military service. Some years later, with various truck and equipment tickets to his name, a flying licence in his pocket and three pips on each shoulder Barry strode out into civvy street.

His priorities had changed, he’d met a fabulous girl, Jill, and longed to experience the wider world. Part of the new plan was to pack up and drive around Australia, with both of them working at odd jobs around the country. Jill had plenty of experience in managing small motor-trade businesses and Barry figured that truck and materials handling equipment driving could be a useful way of replenishing the couple’s coffers en route, and we agreed with him.

From all the rhetoric we’ve heard over the many years of reporting on the road transport business Barry seemed to be the ideal sort of the bloke the industry wanted to attract and keep.

While the couple saved up a travel nest egg Barry looked for real-world truck driving experience, scoring a job with a local tipper operator, doing short-haul work in rigids, semis and truck-and-dog rigs.

Barry adopted a professional approach to his work. He was keen to know the best way to drive each vehicle type and we had many discussions about the latest driving techniques being taught at truck driving schools here and overseas.

We gave him some hints on 18-speed technique we’d picked up from Pat Cook at the Mt Cotton Truck Driving School and from Eaton’s US experts and Barry delighted in knowing the best way to use the equipment he was entrusted with.

He was ‘stoked’ when he tried out these techniques and found they made his and the truck’s life easier.

Barry’s professional attitude caught the eye and ear of a larger carrier, engaged in intra- and inter-state haulage. More money was the inducement and Barry made the switch.

At first his life changed little, as he was kept on regional routes, but then came That Thursday.

Barry had done a couple of short-haul jobs in the morning, taking about five hours to drop a couple of loads – jobs that didn’t exceed the 100-kilometre radius that would have required log-book entries. Then he was asked to take a trailer load to a city about 400 klicks distant, drop a load, collect another and have it back by morning.

Barry did the sums in his head: five hours work already done, a half-hour break due; a six-hour trip ahead, including another compulsory half-hour rest break; an unload and reload and that would be it – a 12-hour driving day. Legally, he would need to have at least six hours rest before driving again and that would mean he couldn’t get the load back to the base by early morning.

The operations guy saw it differently: the five hours work already done wasn’t entered in Barry’s logbook, so it technically didn’t exist, did it? All Barry had to do was ‘start’ his logbook working day at lunchtime, do a ‘legal’ 14-hour, 800-kilometre round trip that wouldn’t exceed the 12-hour driving limit and everything would be rosy.

Barry did the job, with a snatched two-hour rest over the steering wheel to punctuate what was virtually a 19-hour driving stint, but when he came home his girlfriend was shocked by his appearance. When Barry went back to the depot later that day, after another snatched sleep of five hours, she came to see us.

“I’ve never known Barry to break any law,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “But the hours he’s just worked aren’t legal – I know that much.”

“It’s the trucking culture,” we told her. “The road transport business is the only one we know of where many companies and drivers break the law – every day.

“It would be hard to find an honest logbook in Australia,” we suggested.

The next night both of them popped in to see us. They’d discussed the situation and had decided that Barry would be getting out of the trucking business as soon as possible. They just couldn’t accept that to be in trucking you had to be a lawbreaker and a potential road hazard.

They’d agreed that neither of them could live with the aftermath of a fatigue-related accident that harmed Barry or other innocent parties.

They had further decided to ‘raid’ their growing nest egg and use some of their hard-earned cash to upgrade Barry’s flying licence to helicopter level. His new ‘earn’ during their around-Australia trip would be chopper and light aircraft flying, in a regulated industry where pilots and their bosses are jointly responsible for operational safety.

This fine couple had turned away from an industry that often ignores the law.

And most trucking companies still wonder why they can’t attract and keep enough good drivers.