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Skills for Logistics gets the thumbs down
Page 22
Page 23
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The latest CM/Michelin survey has bad news for Skills for Logistics, but at least the driver shortage seems to be easing. But what are we doing to help young drivers?
Much of the industry is not aware of the work of Skills for Logistics, according to the latest CM/ Michelin Business Monitor survey.
We asked operators if they believed Skills for Logistics had done anything for the industry. Unfortunately for Skills for Logistics, the reply was overwhelmingly negative — 70% of respondents said they thought that the sector skills council had not done anything.
Mark Harwood. boss of Bolton firm Thomas Harwood, asked: "What's Skills for Logistics? I can't really say whether it's done anything because I don't know what it's about."
If nothing else, this suggests that SfL has not managed to engage
with the smaller operators in the industry.
Overall, the driver shortage seems to have eased slightly: only 12% of operators reported driver vacancies this month and only 7% said the situation had deteriorated. Again, only a small percentage (7%) told us that a shortage of drivers was affecting their ability to do businessthough just over a quarter (28%) said their driver costs were going up.
Harwood added: "Touch wood, but we don't have a vast turnover of drivers because we class ourselves as a family firm and we think we treat them a bit better than some of the bigger operators.
"We don't find that our drivers leave to go elsewhere particularly we haven't had anyone leave for eight months now."
And Gerald Field from Dudleybased JJ Field said the shortage has lessened in the West Midlands: IThere are plenty of drivers about we get regular calls asking about vacancies. In this area they're coming from the manufacturing industry and own-account operations as there has been a downturn in work since Christmas."
The survey also revealed some interesting data about young drivers and their position within the industry. 58% of respondents said they could not attract young drivers; 54% said high insurance costs were a barrier to them entering the industry; and no less than 95% told us that more needs to be done to bring young drivers on board.
The survey also showed that the industry has a reasonable level of understanding of Transport for London's proposals for the London Low Emission Zone.
More than 60% were aware of TfL's plans and 41% were clued up on the specifics of the LEZ (Euro-3 trucks from 2008; Euro-4 from 2010). Even more encouragingly, the vast majority of operators questioned said their trucks were already compliant with Euro-3 or Euro-4. •