Trucking Australia 22: Solving the Skills Shortage

In a special segment of the Trucking Australia 22 Conference, questions were raised about the perennial problem in the Transport and Logistics industry of the skills shortage. And some quite amazing statistics were revealed.

Paul Walsh, Chief Executive Officer of Australian Industry Standards (AIS) told us that across the trucking and logistics industry there are over 190,000 businesses, and of those businesses, 98.5 per cent are classed as small businesses.

Those businesses employ around 540,000 people, and in the trucking industry, 95.3 per cent are male and just 4.7 per cent are female.

According to Mr Walsh, by 2027, the industry will need to find over 30,000 people to fill the vacancies. “That is a massive number,” said Mr Walsh. “So how do we try to bridge that gap? We’ve got some real challenges in front of us. I see the gender distribution as an opportunity.

“Some of the earlier presentations have talked about how we try to bridge that gap and make it more attractive for females to get into the industry.

“The transport and logistic industry has been reporting shortages of people for as long as I have been in this job, over ten years, but we’ve never seen it like this.”

“Truck driving isn’t an unskilled occupation, but that’s the perception of the people out there. IIt’s been seen as an unattractive career path for a long time.

“School leavers have no real pathway to the industry.

“So how do we change the perception and make it a more attractive pathway and put it up there are a profession? We all know it is, we absolutely know it is.

“So, go back to a conversation I Had with Scott Bucholz last year when we ran a whole series of consultations right across the industry to try to find out what the appetite was for moving this to an apprenticeship. It’s been talked about in the past but it’s never had any groundswell support.

“Those conversations made it really clear that it’s not panacea, it’s not going to fix everything, but it is something we need to do.

“No one is going to fix this on their own and no one company is going to fix it. But the support for the apprenticeship was overwhelming,” Mr Walsh said.

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Mr Walsh went on to say that the IRC made the recommendation to the State and Territory governments that heavy-duty truck driving should be established as an apprenticeship.

Mr Walsh added that it’s not going to be mandated as an entry into the transport industry. The itself industry will determine that over time, but it’s not on the radar at the moment.

“The idea is we structure the apprenticeship and it starts to fill some of the holes," Mr Walsh said. “It can be applied to existing workers. You can put someone through it to validate their skills. So it works like a trade.

“It also starts to address new entrants so we build some pathways so that people can come into the industry. That way, we can pathway school leavers into the profession.

“We’re also looking at a school-based pre-apprenticeship so that they can have a go at it before they leave school.

“What we’re trying to get to is this professional heavy-vehicle driver and have that seen as something equal to any of the [other] trades.”

Mr Walsh said that where we at right now is that the States and Territories have to ‘declare’ the apprenticeship. Tasmania has already declared, so it is coming their way soon, and the others have indicated their intention. Queensland and SA are very close.

It’s a two year apprenticeship, not four years, that will give the recipients a heavy-rigid truck licence, a forklift licence, and more.

Gary Mahon from the QTA said that they are working on a more immediate solution, as the current driver shortage situation is impeding growth and holding business back.

He says that one of the problems is driver experience. Businesses should teach more people on the job so that they gain experience as a proper transport operator.

“Under a program that we’ve developed, what we’re trying to do is fill out the space (between people getting their licence and when they actually have experience as a transport operator) in a supervised way so that they would be fit for task and job-ready (when they came out the other side).

Mr Mahon said that what we’ve been doing in the past is that somewhere along the line, a person gets a truck licence, they go to a truck company and try to get a job, they get knocked back as they haven’t got any experience.

After getting knocked back several times, they go and get another job and are lost to the industry simply because of a lack of experience.

“That’s the story we’re hearing, where they get the licence, they’re full of optimism, they try to get a start, basically the door’s closed because unless you’ve got some experience, we’re not going to talk to you.

“We’ve now got more vacancies than we’ve got people… but we’ve got a good story to tell. It’s a good career path. It is a path where many people go on to greater and greater success.”

What the QTA is looking at is that the employer recruit people who you’d otherwise not. “They’re looking for a start. We want the employer to take them on and then mentor them for 160 hours,” said Mr Mahon. That might be with a senior driver or five different senior drivers, or in some other capacity.

“We’re looking for people who’ve got a licence, they’re green, maybe they’ve just a heavy rigid licence.

“During the period of their 160 hours they’d have to sit for four one-day classroom sessions where they’d get a much more intense education on how to do various things like load-restraint guide or fatigue management.

“It’s an employer led, employer-driven program. What we’re tyring to do is get some funding support from the government for the 160 days and the four-day classroom sessions.”

Whichever way the drivers gain experience in the industry is somewhat irreleveant at this stage, but the bottom line is that operators need to encourage people into the industry rather than turn them away for lack of experience.

At least at Trucking Australia 22, the discussion was being had on many fronts and hopefully it will go some way to addressing the chronic driver shortages we are experiencing now.