There are a number of factors at play including delayed testing because of covid, relatively low wages, and perhaps drivers shifting to more local deliveries e.g. supermarkets post covid due to changing demand. I was speaking to a taxi driver who said the taxi industry was being decimated by this

Yes, though Europe is a larger "network." I think it's a bit like Metcalfe's law. Even if the EU has similar shortages of labor or goods, the larger number of citizens and companies allows things to flow to and from wherever they're needed more easily. The UK is now a separate far smaller system no longer plugged into that larger network.

Those are Human beings that have to be, in essence, "stolen away" from another job, in the case of high school graduates (or whatever you call them) from another potential career. That's why wage isn't the magic wand many people believe it to be. If one industry increases wages (provided they can afford it), another gets the short stick. Unless you "steal" workers from other countries. As the UK did/does successfully for example with health workers...

So yes, while there is a wider issue, the wider issue is not the current problem or the high-order bit.

Note also that UGKOV plans to address the driver shortage by offering to ease restrictions on non UK-based (i.e. EU) drivers.

So yes, this is totally due to Brexit.

Hard to imagine why they might not be jumping at the chance to spend another Xmas with no access to sanitation or even food in a place that is run by people who abuse them publicly every day

This problem has been brewing for decades as the jobs have been outsourced to low cost countries and the drivers mercilessly exploited. Now that some economies have improved and COVID has hit a lot of those drivers are either unavailable or simply unwilling to travel so far and so long in horrible working conditions for so little reward.

Society needs to recalibrate the value of workers who do manual work. There really is no good reason why the average software developer should be paid more than an HGV driver while enjoying much better working conditions.

See https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Software_Developer/..., https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Heavy_%2F_Tractor-T..., https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Delivery_Driver/Hou...

There really is. Computers will blindly obey orders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and can be scaled pretty much indefinitely. So those capable of giving computers orders are in a position to do a large amount of important work, with little effort.

Truck drivers can only do a relatively small amount of work at a given time. Trucks have a limit to the volume of weight they can carry, and the speeds that they may travel to carry it. Thus, their work per hour is capped to a very modest amount. Since there's no real efficiencies to be gained, the only way to improve wages for drivers is to increase the cost of goods by a proportional amount.

Replacing fuel delivery via truck with fuel delivery via pipeline would make things much more efficient, but seems like a waste of resources given that EVs are taking off.

It's not fair, but it is reality. Any profession whose labor cannot be augmented by technological efficiencies is likely going to face the same economic realities. They either go up-market and serve only those who can pay reasonable prices for their services, they get their wages and status slashed in a cut-throat environment, or they are displaced by an inferior, machine-driven replacement.

Reminiscent of Teresa May's "magic money tree" comment

- There is only really a "shortage" of about 100-150 tanker drivers in the entire country.

- The petrol shortage was caused by aforementioned hauliers association deliberately telling the press that there was about to be a massive fuel shortage. That wasn't true but triggered panic buying, provoking an artificial "crisis" that was used (successfully) to put pressure on the government to issue some visas to eastern European truckies.

- There are more vacancies for HGV drivers, but that's mostly due to a lockdown-induced backlog at the driver licensing authority, combined with many people who have HGV licenses not wanting to drive due to poor pay and conditions.

- Brexit isn't the cause of this (which at any rate came into effect at the start of the year), except via a rather tortuous route ... the people at the RHA who manipulated the public through the press are all notoriously and outspokenly anti-Brexit, and they unfortunately have a history of leaking, in fact their press guy is a former BBC journalist already known to the government for prior leaking. BBC is of course notoriously anti-Brexit culturally. Therefore it is very likely these people saw an opportunity to both make money by getting access back to cheap labour whilst simultaneously winning a propaganda victory by convincing everyone to blame Brexit.

- And in fact Brexit has allowed the government to rapidly adjust the criteria for licensing HGV drivers to help clear the backlog, which wouldn't otherwise have been possible under EU rules.

So that's the official line at the moment.

Workers aren't prevented from travelling because of Covid restrictions, but Visa restrictions do apply. Also it's not a good prospect to move to a country where you feel like you are on some kind of a migratory ejection seat...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl...

This is widely reported across a number of publications

Somehow it seems on these forums that any left leaning publication is immediately trusted but any right leaning one immediately distrusted.

The companies blame visa rules because they don't want to pay staff more. It is that simple (what people don't understand, even in the UK, these stories are all coming from a lobbying group of haulers...not drivers, the people who are having to pay staff more and are very angry about doing so, they just want the cheap labour back).

One of the companies that has had persistent shortages for months is a bread producer making £30m/year, they have 150 driver vacancies. I know someone who talked to a hiring manager there, they pay below market, they are experiencing massive attrition, when he asked what pay rises they were offering...2%, "the rise is satisfactory, workers should be happy"...meanwhile other firms are paying 10-30% raises, some HGV drivers are being retained on £50-60k salaries (this producer pays people £27k for multi-drop, starting at 2am, I believe it is mostly class 2 but their wages are a fantasy). Some firms in the UK have glutted themselves on cheap labour. They have no idea how to operate any other way (and btw, this bread producer is throwing away product every day because they don't have drivers, at no point have they tried to raise wages, they believe the low wage labour will return it seems).