Drive for Britain! UK Scrambles for Truckers Amid Supply Woe

LONDON (AP) — British energy firms are rationing supplies of gasoline and shutting some petrol pumps — the newest during a string of shortages that have seen McDonald’s take milkshakes off the menu, KFC run low of chicken and gaps appear on supermarket shelves.

The haulage industry warns that things are anything but normal, and is pressing the govt to loosen immigration rules and recruit more drivers from Europe to avert Christmas shortages of turkeys and toys.

The government is resisting that move, and scrambling to lure more British into truck driving, long viewed as an underpaid and underappreciated job.

“Driving isn’t seen as a 21st-century sexy vocation,” said Laurence Bolton, director of the National Driving Centre, a family-owned school for truck drivers within the London suburb of Croydon.

But that’s beginning to change. Bolton’s school has seen a 20% increase in applicants since the U.K.’s pandemic restrictions eased earlier this year, with bus drivers, laid-off hospitality workers and even former airline pilots seeking to retrain as truckers, a suddenly in-demand and increasingly well-paid occupation.

“It exposes the opportunities,” said 31-year-old Stephen Thrower, who works as a van driver but is training on trucks. “It’s more of employment for all times .”

As a trainee trucker practiced reversing an enormous rig between orange cones at the school’s asphalt lot, Bolton reeled off the ingredients that have made for a trucking crisis. Britain’s departure from the ecu Union prompted some European workers to go home. British government closed a loophole that a lot of drivers wont to keep tax payments down. COVID-19 lockdowns halted driver testing for months, stopping the flow of latest truckers.

Countries including the us and Germany also are facing a driver shortage. But the U.K.’s problem has been worsened by Brexit. Britain’s full departure from the EU last year ended the proper of the bloc’s citizens to measure and add the U.K., making it harder for firms to use the eastern European drivers that a lot of had come to believe .

The pandemic also disrupted labor markets round the world, throwing many people a minimum of temporarily out of labor . An estimated 1.4 million Europeans left Britain for his or her home countries during the pandemic, often to be closer to family. It’s uncertain what percentage will return.

Britain’s industry is lobbying for truck drivers to be added to the “shortage occupation list,” which might make it easier to recruit drivers from Europe. There are similar calls from Britain’s farming and food processing industries, which are in need of fruit-pickers and meat-packers.

The Conservative government has refused, saying British workers should be trained to fill the roles .

“We’ve continually allowed our domestic market to underperform by essentially having wages undercut by people coming in prepared to try to to the work for fewer , and in pretty bad conditions sometimes,” Shapps told lawmakers Wednesday. “And that’s the broader picture that we’re determined to resolve.”

In an effort to ease the shortage, the govt has extended the amount of hours drivers can work hebdomadally , increased trucker testing and “streamlined” the training process. One change means drivers not need to qualify on a rigid truck before moving up to large tractor trailers.

Bolton generally welcomes the govt moves, but has concerns about the security of letting drivers move straight from cars to 18-wheelers.

“I don’t care if you’re the simplest car driver within the world — it’s 16½ meters (54 feet) long,” he said.

Shapps said things is improving “week by week” as more new drivers pass their tests. But businesses warn the answer won’t be quick or easy.

Ian Wright, chief executive of industry group the Food and Drink Federation, said the driving force drought is a component of an enormous shakeup of labor markets and provide chains round the world.

“It’s getting to worsen ,” Wright said at a recent seminar organized by the Institute for state think-tank. “We should get wont to the very fact that occasionally empty shelves … goes to be the new normal.”