Slow Progress on Driver Recruitment

Here’s a video which is one year old and that time gap is a good indicator of how the trucking industry and the governments of Australia are making slow progress on driver recruitment, if we’re making any progress at all.

Essentially, this is a good news story about women getting into trucking. Those that have made it have to be particularly driven and determined to make it into the ranks of the truck drivers of Australia.

This ABC report is on the new generation of female truck drivers hitting the roads, helping deliver Australia from its supply crisis, and was presented by Rhiannon Shine. Anyone watching it back then would probably come away with the impression that there is progress being made and there will be quite a lot more women behind the wheel of a truck by 2024.

There are encouraging words about a national apprenticeship system and a push to get more young people engaged by the trucking industry. Plenty of promises, but not much progress.

Campaigners like Heather Jones, who is featured in the video have been a voice in the wilderness on this topic, and I don’t mean she is based in Karratha! Her initiative and others like it, which have grown around the country can only make incremental progress, one driver at a time.

The industry’s need is dire, and some radical solutions plus adequate funding need to be injected into the process, if we are going to make any progress on a problem, which is going to start affecting the Australian economy’s bottom line.

Fine words and promises are not going to cut it anymore, the need is clear, the solutions outlined in the report are obvious/

If we look back at this video in a year’s time, are we going to be able to say progress has been made? I hope so, but I am not holding my breath.