As someone who has been in the trucking industry for well over 40 years it is very tempting to look back at what the industry was like in those early days and do tell plenty of hair raising stories about the characters we met on the road and some of the scrapes we either got into or managed to avoid.
There are always plenty of stories about getting away with something we shouldn’t have been doing.
However, as a responsible member of the trucking community these sorts of reminiscences are not helpful in the current business and employment conditions. The trucking industry desperately needs new people. There is a dire need for new blood in the industry at all levels and in all sectors.
I have a suspicion that the sorts of stories that we do tell around the
tables at roadside stops or over a beer at industry conferences are not helping our cause.
There is a genuine need for us to present ourselves as something which is attractive to that generation of people who are coming through and who need to find a career. Perhaps the industry shouldn’t be sitting around telling nostalgic stories but instead working out how to make working in an industry which has developed some practices which are not particularly attractive to younger people.
We need to work out how to make those practices into something which would be attractive to them. Then we’ll draw in the people and create some interest in the industry that we love, but also the industry that we will leave, as the older generation move to retiring from the industry over the next few years.
As somebody with a long experience in the industry, I am probably not the one to be giving advice on what those changes need to be. We need to talk more to the young people who are already in our industry and ask them what we could do to make this industry more attractive to their peers to their friends, boyfriends and girlfriends.
Credit: Source link
