The trucking industry is the backbone of Australia’s economy.
Regarded as the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and 13th largest in the world, it constantly transports a plethora of goods and services to producers and consumers across the country, tirelessly maintaining its intricate flow.
And as the country’s freight task is expected to increase 57 per cent by the year 2040, the sector, as it fast becoming evident, will only become more important.
But despite this essential role in delivering a high quality of life to Australians around the country, the trucking industry faces an extreme and ongoing labour shortage that threatens Australia’s supply chain.
The National Road Transport Association (NatRoad) has attempted to engage with the government in the hopes of inciting positive change.
NatRoad’s 2024 Call to the National Cabinet revealed alarming statistics from its industry survey, completed in collaboration with the International Road Transport Union (IRU).
This survey found that in July of this year, there were over 26,000 vacant truck driving positions across Australia, with the number to increase should the industry fail to act.
As the issue reaches a boiling point, it has been simmering for a long time.
Warren Clark has been the CEO of NatRoad since 2015, and during his tenure the labour shortage now confronting Australian trucking has only intensified.
Helming the association that is desperately trying to spark change for the industry, he has recognised the problem has now reached critical levels.
“I think this shortage has been an issue for a number of years,” he says.
“It had crystallised after COVID and is continuing to get worse. Now we’ve reached a crucial level where if we, as an industry, as a government and as the public, don’t start to fix some of these issues, we will have severe problems. This is something that needs addressing immediately.”
Confronting the issue though may not be as straightforward as it seems.
It is now largely understood that the trucking labour shortage is the result of many intersecting issues within the industry, which are hindering the process of attracting new workers.
The trucking industry is experiencing large skill gaps in hired drivers that can diminish safety standards that can add to negative public perceptions, another challenge the sector has done much good in overcoming in recent years.
There is also an extravagant demographic problem: the NatRoad and IRU July report found that nearly 50 per cent of all drivers in the industry were over the age of 55 and close to retirement.
Additionally, it is older men that dominate the field; the population of women drivers was reportedly only 6.5 per cent, and a staggering 5.2 per cent of drivers were considered ‘young people’.
“This shortage is the result of a mixture of these symptoms, 100 per cent,” Warren says.
The lack of a strong government-mandated national training program for truck drivers, and reforms around the licencing system, serve as large contributors to the national truck shortage; different states, territories and even trucking companies instead instill their own training systems onto young drivers, which can sometimes lead to inexperienced drivers taking jobs from other individuals and driving dangerously on roads.
Tony Armstrong of Armstrong’s Driving Education in Victoria has recognised this lack of uniform training in the trucking industry for years.
“I’ve been trying to drive reform in the industry since the early 2000s,” he says.
“There’s definitely a driver shortage, but it’s a quality driver shortage. We need to train people to drive at low risk. We need to train them so they’re not only employable but are protecting the community. Experience is irrelevant if you don’t have the right foundation to build that experience on.”
Australia’s truck licencing system places importance on the age of the driver and the time they’ve held the licence for, as opposed to the driving practice and experience they have accrued.
Warren is pushing for reforms which will target this system, enabling younger drivers with proven experience to start driving sooner, and to curb the industry’s ageing workforce.
“Provide competency-based training, remove age barriers, and ensure that all new drivers are totally prepared,” he says.
“The only way that truck companies can do it is by taking training into their own hands and providing decent facilities themselves. Some large companies do that already, but if you’re a small company, you can’t afford to do that. There’s a safety issue present here.”
Truck companies big enough to implement their own training programs are doing their best to cure the industry’s shortage symptoms, but it doesn’t seem to be enough.
Take Followmont, for example — a large Queensland-based truck company, whose fleet of over 1,000 trucks makes daily journeys around the state and interstate, transporting a wide range of products and equipment.
Amid the labour shortage, CEO and Managing Director Mark Tobin is frustrated with the Queensland Government’s lack of initiative and has sought to take driver training into his own hands.
“I believe the government has nowhere near supported the labour gap through training or development of Cert III programs,” Mark says.
“We’re not getting it off the ground. The government in Queensland is just not waking up to what’s going on in the industry. At the end of the day, in a cost-of-living crisis, unfortunately, the consumer is going to have to pay.”
In addition to the lack of a developed training course for drivers in the state, Mark also believes Queensland’s infrastructure conditions are exacerbating the issue, discouraging workers from joining the industry.
Sending his own drivers on these roads, Mark is nothing short of impressed by the work they can do despite the challenges they face.
“What the transport industry in Queensland achieves every day is outstanding if you look at the infrastructure we’re dealing with,” Mark says.
“The road network across Queensland isn’t sufficient to handle the country’s freight task. I don’t know how many people have to die on the Bruce Highway before the government wakes up. It’s appalling. And with all of this while trying to attract drivers — why would anyone want to go and drive a truck from Brisbane to Cairns?”
Followmont’s own training programs are an attempt to combat the dangerous combination of inexperienced drivers and poor infrastructure, working to give quality attention to the company’s staff and aiming to attract more workers.
For Mark and Followmont, this effort is imperative to labour retention, as it communicates to the workers that the company cares.
“We put a lot of time and effort into our recruitment,” Mark says.
“We develop career pathway programs for employees wanting to become drivers. You can’t just throw people in trucks; you need to train them, support their education. You’ve got to actually put back into the business to show people what the task is, rather than throwing them in a truck and telling them to go to work.”
A substantial aspect of Followmont’s training and driver education aims to advertise the benefits of working in the industry, fighting against the public’s negative perception of trucking which is impacting the labour shortage.
According to Mark, there are many advantages to working in trucking that consumers don’t understand, even though they rely on the industry so heavily.
Warren Clark has gained valuable insight into the upsides of the trucking industry while running NatRoad, and also believes the greater public needs greater awareness.
“Most people don’t understand the rewards, the job security and the potential future of our industry,” he says.
“We need to better market the benefits and careers in trucking, increase the interest and potential candidacy. You’ve got flexible work hours, high renumeration, and not too far down the track, self-employment. If you go into the industry, you basically have a job for life. People aren’t even aware of that sort of thing.”
Doing his part to dispel negative trucking clichés, Mark is vocal about the positive treatment of his workers, painting a much more flattering and sophisticated picture of truck drivers compared to the ones in the minds of many Australians.
“Transport is not a rogue industry like we’re portrayed,” Mark says.
“We get all this bad press from the media, but people just don’t understand what goes into this industry. We treat our drivers like pilots. All our linehaul vehicles where drivers will need to sleep in cabs, are fitted with TVs, microwaves and air conditioning units. At all major changeover points we have built dedicated drivers’ quarters and will often put drivers up in hotels if required. We’re doing everything we possibly can to support them.”
Followmont is also working a great deal to attract many women drivers in light of labour scarcity and a lack of diversity in the industry.
“We run a campaign every year around promoting the career paths available for females in the industry,” Mark says. “We invest a lot into promoting the positive image of our industry, and we invest in training and development — it doesn’t matter who you are.”
Followmont’s current staff is made up of 79 per cent men and 21 per cent women, and the company has been taking great strides to lower the barriers of entry for more women in the industry.
Earlier this year, Followmont’s own 24-year-old Jade Harney won the National Young Driver of the Year award.
These efforts undoubtedly help to diversify the industry in a time where workers are more essential than ever, but not everyone agrees with this method of achieving diversity.
Jacquelene Brotherton has spent over 50 years in the trucking industry, both behind the wheel and in many management positions.
Today, she sits as the Chair for Transport Women Australia and is somewhat resistant to some of the tactics that truck companies and organisations have implemented to involve underrepresented groups in the industry.
“The idea of an equal-opportunity employer does not work as a marketing strategy,” Jacquelene says.
“The industry has focused so long on women and the youth to solve our shortage problem, but there aren’t enough of them interested. It’s a great industry for women where the sky’s the limit, but we need to be selling the job, not the diversity points.”
According to Jacquelene, she has been observing the ongoing labour shortage for at least the last decade and is also acutely aware of the industry’s negative perception, but believes that the reputation of trucking must be fixed before trucking organisations can pander to underrepresented groups for labour.
“Trucking does not promote itself in the right way,” Jacquelene says.
“People think the industry and its jobs are low-tech and low-skilled, when it’s really the opposite. Trucks are decked out with modern equipment, and young people don’t realise that they don’t have to be big and tough to drive.”
Jacquelene’s own experiences working her way up in the trucking industry as a woman have been overwhelmingly positive.
According to her, she never faced issues in workplaces due to her gender, was embraced by the companies and groups she worked for and found immense success as a result.
She doesn’t believe in quotas ensuring proper representation and seems pragmatic about the make-up of the industry’s labour.
Deciding that women and the youth will not be galvanised into joining the industry based on the attempts of its many companies, Jacquelene is encouraging the industry to turn to a seemingly untapped labour market to give Australian trucking the support it needs.
“We need to look to migrant workers and make them welcome,” she says. “There are many skilled workers outside of the country’s borders who want these opportunities, and we need the help.”
This is yet another potential labour shortage solution that rests in the Federal Government’s hands. Warren Clarke has attempted to pass this message on, as he also sees migrant workers as a valuable source of labour to help keep Australian trucking afloat.
“We want immigrants to come into our country,” Warren says.
“For this, we want immigration laws to be changed so that trucking is seen as suffering from an essential skill shortage. But if we’re going to have foreign drivers come into Australia, they’ve got to be evaluated for competency and trained properly, and they must have an Australian licence when they’re driving a vehicle 4.5 tonnes and over. At the present time, not all of them need to do that.”
Australia’s trucking labour shortage is a multi-faceted issue that has been putting industry titans into a panic for years.
Now reaching new heights — an incohesive national truck licencing program, dangerous state-road infrastructure and a strong lack of domestic workforce interest in trucking — change must come and it must come first at a federal level.