?diesel ?

[Norange]

Same across multiple sectors, not just logistics. Every sector paired down to the minimum.
I can not get experienced engineers to man our critical facilities despite offering 25% over London rates for jobs in the East Midlands.
Institute of Mechanical Engineers have been lamenting the lack of investment in apprenticeships and graduate engineering positions for 20 years.

What are the record number of students studying for?
Oh yeah, marine biology and media studies, to go onto a meaningful career (sorry zero hours contract) in Starbucks
?

Genuine question though, can you look at your business history and confidently say you've offered that training over the last few decades? We're in a similar position currently and I'd have to reflect and say the business has done nowhere near enough to support upskilling the local population. Post grad or further education we haven't done too badly, but we've really failed to give school leavers a decent option.

 

[Jackware]

News articles from just a year ago highlight how the fuel companies were laying off drivers due to lack of demand during the height of lockdown. I wonder how many of those qualified drivers are delivering parcels in a van, able to get home every night instead.
And further back in time the supermarket bosses reduced the number of their employed drivers and subcontracted to logistics companies to reduce wage and pension liabilities, making more profits to keep the shareholders happy and increase their own bonus pots.
The problem of short term profits rather than long term investment...

 

[JetSetDemo]

This is a media shit fest. I’ve had 2 deliveries totalling 72,000L of diesel in the midlands and another 36,000L in Essex, our vendor has no driver or supply issues and has come through on his commitments to adhere to this weeks delivery schedules. Have over another 100k coming over the week.

None of this has prevented me spending waisted hours in crisis meetings and contingency planning taking me away from the import tasks of browsing the internet looking at e bikes.

Also unfortunately I can’t fill up at work but managed to get my car filled up yesterday at Tesco before they ran out and my wife’s car today at Tesco that had a delivery last night.

our media and press are totally unaccountable, it’s scary they can run a headline that’s screws with out lives so much.

Drivers from the agency are tight this year but that’s not so much brexit as the IR35 tax rules change, that is when we noticed the situation start to change.

 

[RustyMTB]

@Mikerb It is almost 16 years since I gave up full time work in the Logistics industry. Transport was not my particular interest but the haulage industry then was warning of being 50,000 HGV drivers short and had been for many years (although I cannot recall now whether it was just class 1 or all of them). I used to wonder at the time how, with hours restricted by law, how the industry held together with so many drivers missing. Foreign drivers was the answer, which had the effect of holding down wages and conditions.

When the government stopped HGV driver training and testing during Covid, I wonder why the FTA, the RHA and other interested bodies did not shout from the rooftops what the effect would be. Maybe they were playing a long game to get driver's wages up? It worked anyway.

I'm in it now. The shortage has been there for years but always manageable by resourceful traffic guys with big contact lists. I see this line about wages being suppressed by cheap Europeans endlessly with an unspoken but implied assumption greed underlies it.

In my experience which is 30 years & 19 of those on my own account, the fundamental issue is an oversupplied market exploited ruthlessly by customers, which these days, since we don't manufacture much any more means the supermarkets & their suppliers who are our customers. It all adds up to a cutthroat business.

I've lost count of the meetings I've had over the years where customers have scoffed at rate cards in the certain knowledge another transport company is just a call away. Overall the UK haulage sector runs on sub 5% margins net. The idea that we stuffed the place with cheap Romanians to fund the director's next Ferrari is a trope.

 

[Norange]

This is a media shit fest. I’ve had 2 deliveries totalling 72,000L of diesel in the midlands and another 36,000L in Essex, our vendor has no driver or supply issues and has come through on his commitments to adhere to this weeks delivery schedules. Have over another 100k coming over the week.

None of this has prevented me spending waisted hours in crisis meetings and contingency planning taking me away from the import tasks of browsing the internet looking at e bikes.

Also unfortunately I can’t fill up at work but managed to get my car filled up yesterday at Tesco before they ran out and my wife’s car today at Tesco that had a delivery last night.

our media and press are totally unaccountable, it’s scary they can run a headline that’s screws with out lives so much.

Drivers from the agency are tight this year but that’s not so much brexit as the IR35 tax rules change, that is when we noticed the situation start to change.

I think the modern world lends itself to things like this spiralling out of control though. The initial reports were pretty innocuous, no? But social media means it gets bent out of shape really quickly.

 

[#lazy]

The MSM just reported what was happening , it was the gov that said the words don’t panic !

 

[R120]

The fuel panic makes me laugh because In my industry (construction) we genuinely have been going though hell with logistics, everything taking longer, costing more, and being constantly rearranged.

On top of that and the well publicised material shortages and associated price rises, we are seeing an extreme shortage of labour, to the extent that trades are now being offered crazy sums to drop one job and go to another, and I work in a sector that pays the highest averages salaries in construction. Even a labourer on one of my site will be on circa 25k a year.

I had one Site agent jump ship from one of my contractors the other day to another contractor - he was on 80k a year plus travel and expenses and was offered 120k by another on a site 3 doors down whose own site agent had gone back to the EU.

He jumped ship even though the company he worked for was probably the best in the business and the one offering him the money doesn’t have a great rep, because how often do you get offers that kind of pay rise, and he knows if it doesn’t work out he will be able to get another job in a day due to the shortage.

Most staff are full time employees and we generally don’t use agency staff as they can be very hit and miss.

Skilled first fix chippies are now being offered £500 day rate, which is double the standard rate, by contractors on multimillion pound projects where they are desperate to fulfill contracts and programmes to avoid penalties.

Absolutely carnage.

 

[JetSetDemo]

The fuel panic makes me laugh because In my industry (construction) we genuinely have been going though hell with logistics, everything taking longer, costing more, and being constantly rearranged.

On top of that and the well publicised material shortages and associated price rises, we are seeing an extreme shortage of labour, to the extent that trades are now being offered crazy sums to drop one job and go to another, and I work in a sector that pays the highest averages salaries in construction. Even a labourer on one of my site will be on circa 25k a year.

I had one Site agent jump ship from one of my contractors the other day to another contractor - he was on 80k a year plus travel and expenses and was offered 120k by another on a site 3 doors down whose own site agent had gone back to the EU.

He jumped ship even though the company he worked for was probably the best in the business and the one offering him the money doesn’t have a great rep, because how often do you get offers that kind of pay rise, and he knows if it doesn’t work out he will be able to get another job in a day due to the shortage.

Most staff are full time employees and we generally don’t use agency staff as they can be very hit and miss.

Skilled first fix chippies are now being offered £500 day rate, which is double the standard rate, by contractors on multimillion pound projects where they are desperate to fulfill contracts and programmes to avoid penalties.

Absolutely carnage.

Agree agency are hit and miss but when your running a network you have to be able to flex with demand, we run over 400 employed drivers for the feeder network and most of them are ten years service plus but since the demand for package delivery surged last year we’ve been more reliant on agency out of peak. Still at least we have fuel ?

 

[Pdoz]

The fuel panic makes me laugh because In my industry (construction) we genuinely have been going though hell with logistics, everything taking longer, costing more, and being constantly rearranged.

On top of that and the well publicised material shortages and associated price rises, we are seeing an extreme shortage of labour, to the extent that trades are now being offered crazy sums to drop one job and go to another, and I work in a sector that pays the highest averages salaries in construction. Even a labourer on one of my site will be on circa 25k a year.

I had one Site agent jump ship from one of my contractors the other day to another contractor - he was on 80k a year plus travel and expenses and was offered 120k by another on a site 3 doors down whose own site agent had gone back to the EU.

He jumped ship even though the company he worked for was probably the best in the business and the one offering him the money doesn’t have a great rep, because how often do you get offers that kind of pay rise, and he knows if it doesn’t work out he will be able to get another job in a day due to the shortage.

Most staff are full time employees and we generally don’t use agency staff as they can be very hit and miss.

Skilled first fix chippies are now being offered £500 day rate, which is double the standard rate, by contractors on multimillion pound projects where they are desperate to fulfill contracts and programmes to avoid penalties.

Absolutely carnage.

It's the same in most industry. You loose $ providing good working conditions / training / security and still have people chasing a perceived better rate elsewhere. I'm becoming a lot more comfortable down sizing my business , and feeling good when the staff who don't reciprocate loyalty move elsewhere. So far, when one of those workers leave the feedback from their colleagues is how much nicer it is to work without them. Sour grapes or dead wood ?

 

[InRustWeTrust]

here in sweden diesel cost 1,52 pound per litre right now which is very expensive.
However, we have no problem with either petrol or diesel that it is out of stock

 

[steve_sordy]

I'm in it now. The shortage has been there for years but always manageable by resourceful traffic guys with big contact lists. I see this line about wages being suppressed by cheap Europeans endlessly with an unspoken but implied assumption greed underlies it.

In my experience which is 30 years & 19 of those on my own account, the fundamental issue is an oversupplied market exploited ruthlessly by customers, which these days, since we don't manufacture much any more means the supermarkets & their suppliers who are our customers. It all adds up to a cutthroat business.

I've lost count of the meetings I've had over the years where customers have scoffed at rate cards in the certain knowledge another transport company is just a call away. Overall the UK haulage sector runs on sub 5% margins net. The idea that we stuffed the place with cheap Romanians to fund the director's next Ferrari is a trope.

There is a fundamental disconnect between "a shortage of drivers" and "an oversupplied market". As we have seen a genuine shortage of drivers forces up wages as customers outbid each other to get them. An oversupplied market leads to fierce bidding wars driving wages down. I do not doubt the determination and the skill set of the managers involved in keeping their businesses running and without penalties for failure. I have witnessed how creative and positive thinking individuals can make a real difference without necessarily just paying more.

The policy and culture of the business can help a lot of course, much more than people believe. During the lorry driver's strike when they blockaded the fuel depots, the company I worked for never once failed to make a finished goods delivery, or failed to have a delivery of packaging and raw materials. We were however contacted by several of the big retailers asking us stop deliveries to one of their RDCs because they were unable to make deliveries from it (meaning it was full). The buyer for one of the bigger retailers told our sales guy that our biggest competitor at that time not only failed to deliver on multiple occasions, but also had their factory stop for a while (none of ours did).

 

[RustyMTB]

I'd venture to suggest if I was mischievous that a full RDC is the ideal building from which to make deliveries...

There is no fundamental contradiction in my post, it's just a matter of chronology. The market has been oversuppplied for decades. The barriers to entry for running trucks on a standard national licence are surprisingly low, leading to the intense rate driven market in general haulage I described. This has been managed skilfully by companies via the time honoured methods of subbing work, agency guys, cabotage & foreign labour.

What then happened is the country voted to place sanctions on its ability to trade freely in labour & goods with the added unhelpful elements of a pandemic & a significsant tax change. But mostly the pandemic & associated lockdowns served to conceal the exodus of labour by suppressing consumer demand to practically zero through Q's 2-4 2020 & Q1 2021. The government reopened retail & hospitality around the March bank holiday & it went nuts & hasn't let up.

Point is, the market was oversupplied, now it isn't & certain sections of the right wing press have latched onto the tight fisted hauliers argument as a handy whipping boy for diverting attention from the root causes of the toxic shambles this country is in, lurching from crisis to crisis on a practicaly daily basis as it suits them to do so. Ordinarily, this stuff passes me by but when they pick on something I know about & can see the lies & misdirection, I'm inclined to pipe up. If others choose to unquestioningly swallow the agitrop, fair enough. Ignorance is bliss & all that.

 

[R120]

The problems in my industry are 100% brexit related, to be precise the execution of brexit, rather than the concept of Brexit itself.

The incompetence of the current political class never cease to amaze me at the moment, specifically those at the top of each party.

I find this especially frustrating as there are some exceptional politicians out there with the required experience and also common sense across all the parties who I suspect would be able to run the country properly, but unfortunately they are sat on the backbenches currently.

Government has become so reactive, rather than proactive, that nearly every industry is hamstrung by the absence of any clear direction or framework to implement clear strategies for moving forward.

 

[Mikerb]

The problems in my industry are 100% brexit related, to be precise the execution of brexit, rather than the concept of Brexit itself.

The incompetence of the current political class never cease to amaze me at the moment, specifically those at the top of each party.

I find this especially frustrating as there are some exceptional politicians out there with the required experience and also common sense across all the parties who I suspect would be able to run the country properly, but unfortunately they are sat on the backbenches currently.

Government has become so reactive, rather than proactive, that nearly every industry is hamstrung by the absence of any clear direction or framework to implement clear strategies for moving forward.

It is however a misconception that elected politicians run the country!! With the possible exception of the Chancellor most Secretaries of State/cabinet members have little or no direct training or experience in the business of their departments. That applies in all tiers of Govt not just HMG, and is not a phenominum restricted to the UK. Whitehall/the Civil Service provide the expert advice and manage implementation whilst ministers merely set policy. Our prime minister is a journalist by trade. He has no managerial or organisational experience or expertise. The opposition leader is a Lawyer........similarly no managerial or organisational experience. So much depends on the proper functioning of Whitehall who are there to advise, support and implement Executive policy regardless of political inclination. Most aspects of policy are subject to scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament. Clearly there are some major weaknesses in this total set up of Governance in my opinion.

 

[R120]

I agree - but the point is that if someone is in charge of a department and sees the benefit of utilising the expertise at their disposal, basically is a good manager of his team, you would get results, whereas when someone is placed as a head of department to bolster support for his boss in the cabinet, you get a mess.

They’re are people in parliament with the relevant experience in the various sectors of governance, though less than their used to be due to the rise of the Oxbridge/spad/ etc route into politics becoming the norm, but ministerial appointments are raralet made these day with any thought of experience in the relevant area.

 

[#lazy]

I dunno ….. Dominic Raabs knowledge on the Dover/Calais crossing as the brexit secretary was second to none !

 

[steve_sordy]

I'd venture to suggest if I was mischievous that a full RDC is the ideal building from which to make deliveries...
................

Not mischievous at all. I agree with you, but if they can't get enough fuel to put in the vehicles to actually empty it, then it stays too full to receive deliveries. The logistics people have to start intervening in what the buyers have set up (who seem to assume elastic warehouses).