The United Kingdom is in the midst of an increasingly severe gas shortage, with motorists finding many stations closed and others experiencing long lines reminiscent of the gas crisis of the 1970s.
The current crisis comes as the result of a growing dearth of truckers in the United Kingdom, one severe enough that tankers of the British military are due to join the logistics chain in the coming days. The shortage is a years-long problem exacerbated by the rapid onset of the coronavirus pandemic and by the drastic decrease of drivers from mainland Europe due to Brexit complications. While certainly amplified by region-specific impacts, the shortage of truckers that the U.K. faces is far from a problem that it faces alone.
Across the world, many Baby Boomer and Gen-X aged career truckers are retiring, but logistics companies are finding that Millennials and Gen-Z aren't that interested in replacing them. Commonly cited concerns by truckers internationally include grueling workloads, long hours and extended periods away from home, and low pay for the amount of labor required.
"It's not a normal life for a human," a Belarusian expat trucker told the Financial Times of his tenure, where he lived and worked out of his truck for 13 weeks for the equivalent of $2,861. "It's like a prison, it's not a job. You do it like a zombie."
While there isn't an actual shortage of labor in terms of newly trained drivers, there is a shortage of retention among them, with the American Trucking Association (ATA) tracking a turnover rate of over 90% for consecutive decades. Many of the concerns mentioned above pertain to the entry-level work that new truckers are forced to "cut their teeth" on, with working conditions for new truckers having only worsened over the years.
The stigma of these entry-level conditions is only exacerbated by the constant press coverage that many operators receive, with stories of shorted wages, firings for illness, and even borderline indentured servitude being all too common. While the issues facing the industry are well known, there hasn't been much activity from regulators anywhere in response.