As everyone in the trucking industry knows, waiting is a major and all-too-frequent issue – amongst operators as well as customers
Glenn ‘Yogi’ Kendall, winner of the 2016 Scania Driver Competition, believes loading and unloading delays are a factor in the current driver shortage.
Kendall has been driving interstate for almost 20 years, and sees the time spent away from home as being a massive issue in the industry. This time is amplified due to the lengthy delays at depots.
“I believe to get people into trucks and to get younger people into transport, you’re got to sort out middle management,” he says.
Kendall says it’s unacceptable for a driver to arrive to at a depot and be told, “well, you’re loading … sometime today”. “That doesn’t cut it, because they, the driver, just don’t want to sit there.”
Kendall explains how a new driver in their mid-20s could be excited about driving up the Newell from Melbourne to Brisbane, or taking a run across to Perth. However, that enthusiasm is soon dimmed when they are spending hours waiting in a depot due to disorganised middle management.
“There’s a lot of middle management in transport that needs to be weeded out and got rid of. The frustrating side of the industry is the waiting time, the downtime, the maybes, the swing and hits.
“You get a middle management bloke that thinks he’s pretty cool who can talk to the drivers and smooth up to the bosses, and he can make his job for $70,000 a year sustainable, when realistically he’s doing bugger all; it’s frustrating.”
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