A major shortage of truck drivers in Southland has seen local transport firms recruiting truck drivers from Europe to meet their needs.
Transport industry leaders have told The Southland Times, the problem has been further exacerbated by Fonterra’s growth in Southland, as the dairy giant lures drivers away from transport firms by offering higher pay, set shifts, and nine months work a year, driving milk tankers.
Fonterra southern operations manager Richard Gray told The Southland Times that Fonterra Edendale had 204 dedicated tanker operators collecting milk, and received a lot of interest from the public about the roles.
“Our ambition is to be an employer of choice, and our offering to tanker operators reflects this,” he says.
But that ambition hasn’t helped other transport operators who are struggling to put bums on driver’s seats.
HW Richard Group transport general manager Wayne McEwan told The Southland Times that a fruitless search for drivers locally and in Australia saw the company hire 20 Irish nationals as drivers.
Cromwell transport operator Barbara Millard who owns Summerland Express Freight with her husband Smilie, says this is the worst driver shortage in their 22 years of operation.
Millard says the firm can’t even attract non-quality drivers. It was also going offshore to seek drivers for contracts in Christchurch, Cromwell, Invercargill, Dunedin, Nelson, and the West Coast.
A survey of transport firms by the Road Transport Forum (RTF) earlier this year highlighted the fact that 112 companies across New Zealand had trucks parked up because of a shortage of more than 400 drivers.
RTF chief executive Ken Shirley told DIESELtalk today that the shortage of qualified and experienced drivers is a global one and not just an issue being faced locally.
“All developed economies have the same chronic shortage of trained and experienced truck drivers,” says Shirley. “In the USA I have heard of instances where transport operators have bought other trucking companies simply to get hold of their pool of labour.”
Shirley says that he cannot understand why the government removed Class 5 drivers from the Immediate Skills Shortage list as its a highly skilled job, and not one that can be easily filled from the pool of unemployed labour in New Zealand.
“It is a five year lead time to train transport operators up to hold a Class 5 combination licence,” says Shirley.
“We continue to step up long term efforts in training and recruitment, and we will also continue to lobby government to address the issue.”
RTF Otago Southland area executive Alan Cooper says that he also wants drivers put back on the government skills list so that overseas drivers can move to the region and work in the industry on a long term basis without having to renew working visas on a regular basis.
