Peter Anderson, the CEO of the Victorian Transport Association, has said transport industry representatives should be targeting 18-year-olds as one way to fix the current truck driver shortage across Australia.
Speaking at WHG’s recent TechDrive event in Melbourne, Anderson said we need to be going into classrooms and letting young people know about the benefits of a career in transport.
“We need to go to a group of 18-year-olds and say, ‘When you finish school, some of you will go to university, and some of you will get a trade.
“‘But some of you might want to get into the transport industry, and in two to three months you’ll be earning $60,000 to $80,000 a year.
“‘You could own your first house at 25 and your first investment property at 35. Who would like to come into our industry?’
“I’m sure we’d get more young people building a career in transport, building a lifestyle, building something that they’re proud to be part of.”
Anderson said operators need to make more of an effort to give young truckies a go and invest time in training them.
“One of the issues we have in our in our industry is that we don’t want to train people,” he continued.
“It’s that age-old idea of ‘if we train them, we lose them’.
“If somebody just got their licence and they knock on your door wanting to drive a truck, they won’t get the job.
“They are told to come back in two years when they’ve got experience, but how can you get experience if you can’t get a job?”
Anderson pointed out that changes to the licensing system are badly needed.
“We don’t think we can train 18-year-olds to drive a truck properly, so we’ve got to wait until they’ve held a car license for 12 months, then they can do the graduated process of waiting another 12 months and then waiting another 12 months.
“They may never give a truck in those 12 months, but they’ll be able to upgrade their license as they go.”
He said that no matter how much these changes are talked about, little progress has been made in the past three decades.
“I’ve got VTA documents dating back to 1996 – a review by the then National Road Transport Commission on heavy vehicle licencing in Austraia.
“In 2013, transport ministers asked for a review of the heavy vehicle licensing system. That review came back in 2017 – nothing changed.
“We had another review in 2020, which was finalised in 2023, and again nothing has changed.
“For over 30 years, this industry has been calling out for licensing review that will actually drive the industry to perform better, to be more accountable, to be more transparent, to attract people – young people to join us.
“Yet we cannot get this out.”
I’m certainly never driving again. You become a target for compliance penalisation. A lot of transport companies are absolute crap and there are some people in the industry that ruin it for everyone.
Legislation and compliance is a big problem. The industry is way over regulated from my point of view
after 40 years I didn’t see anything like that
I tell anyone wanting to drive a truck make you don’t require a logbook cause you will get pinged for the smallest mistake it’s the laws cash cow
80k is not enough to be in this shit industry when nhvr can destroy your ability to earn in one go if you make mistakes 80k isn’t enough to have no life and be ridiculed for what we do. Maybe stop using the transport industry as a cash cow and let us make a living
I would not recommend any young drivers to get into transport, I’ve been in the game nearly 40 years and it’s got to the stage where you can’t trust the truck coming towards you, since governments have aloud international drivers into the industry it has gone backwards, I’ve passed international drivers with feet on dash on cruise while on phone, the industry has become to dangerous for young people
The glaring problem with your argument is insurance. Putting an 18 year old in my truck skyrockets my insurance costs. The base excess jumps to 10k immediately and there are another approximately 5k additional excesses that can come into play.
Who pays that?