The lack of truckers is not unique to the UK, where, due in part to Brexit, this deficit of freight carriers is causing supply problems. Without being, for now, so pressing, the problem of the shortage of truckers it also affects Spain and from the sector they have been a while warning, as he has done this week from the pages of The Voice of Asturias a representative of the truckers in the region.
Ovidio de la Roza, president of the Association of Transport, Logistics, Parking and Related Activities Entrepreneurs of the Principality of Asturias (Asetra), has launched a new alert on the subject Calling whoever corresponds to take action on the matter before the problem worsens and situations such as the British one occur, where gasoline is scarce and some products do not reach the shelves in supermarkets. Although it is a very distant image for the Spanish consumer and here there is no Brexit handicap, the problem exists. A subject that, De la Roza points out, “It affects all of Europe, not only Spain, and that is of increasing concern”.
At Spanish case, that figure, which experts already gave a few weeks ago, encrypting the shortage of professionals around 15,000, the reasons are various. One of the main ones is that generational change is not taking place, causing the average age of drivers to exceed 50 years. That is because the young people are not attracted to a profession that it makes it difficult to “reconcile work and family life.”
For the president of Asetra this is one of the main problems, but not the only one. Logic says that if the conditions are good, the problems to reconcile can take a backseat depending on the personal family situation of each one. However, this does not happen because conditions are not ideal.
One of the demands of the sector, for example, is that “there is companies that force drivers to load and unload and that is a task that does not correspond to them. Many times, they also have long wait times. The big problem is these working conditions more than the driver’s job itself, ”says De la Roza. To this are added other variables such as the cost of training or the little penetration of women in the profession.
From the carrier network online Transeop They mention the fact that “the collective agreement establishes a remuneration for professional drivers in proportion to the kilometers they travel and not according to the hours they spend in the truck. This situation forces professional drivers to increase their working hours by performing far more overtime than actually paid”.
The Asetra representative acknowledges that “it is true that it is a highly competitive sector, which may not have the benefits it should, but we must remember that in Asturias we have the highest agreement in Spain”. In this sense, he mentions that “money would be the least worrying because in the end it is a matter of supply and demand” and calculates that, in Asturias, although the salary varies a lot depending on the variables that establish it, it “does not fall below the 1,700-1,800 euros per month plus allowances ”.
In August, in information on the sector published by The world The figure of 15,000 was already mentioned as an estimate of truckers that the sector needs and does not have. So, the Spanish Confederation of Goods Transport (CETM) urged the authorities to “seek solutions for the transport of goods by road, since the sector is vital for supplying the population and the functioning of the economy. If the driver shortage continues to grow, the consequences could be devastating”.
De la Roza, in his statements to The Voice of Asturias, comments that “it seems that at the moment it only worries us” and hopes that the authorities will realize it as soon as possible so that they can remedy the situation before it worsens. The solutions are to improve working conditions, aid for the cost of training, promote the incorporation of women …
Regarding the situation in the United Kingdom, the Asturian representative acknowledges that trips abroad are always more difficult due to the time they involve, but in the British case it is now even more complicated: “Brexit has multiplied the problems to go there. Before you could make the trip in six days and now it takes 15. Drivers flee from there. They are all customs procedures, which entails a stoppage of transport and doubles times ”.
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