“Thank you, Amazon delivery person for delivering my parcel”

It’s as easy as that isn’t it. You click on what you want, and sit and wait for it to arrive. But there’s a lot more work that’s involved when it comes to ordering goods. And this doesn’t just mean things that you order online. This includes getting food to supermarkets and shops.

A simple drive around will show you the work involved in getting food into supermarkets or goods into shops for you to buy. And how that’s achieved is by using lorries. Without a method of transporting from one place to another, how do you expect to go out and buy a loaf of bread ready for breakfast?

But what happens if they aren’t people to drive the lorries to deliver the food? In the UK, this could be a reality that they’re facing. There have been reports that the number of drivers is reaching an all-time low, causing concern in the wholesale industry.

Consideration of alternative means of delivery has been mentioned by James Bielby, the Chief Executive of the Federation of Wholesale Distributors, who suggests that the government should be on standby for the option of using the army to help.

Bielby suggests this because of his experience of being 70,000 vehicles short.

The suggestion of using the army, however, has been questioned by others in the industry. A Road Haulage Association spokesperson thinks that the use of the army isn’t as easy as people think, as retraining would be required. This is due to the type of work the army does and the vehicles used are completely different from civilian drivers. The reality is the number of army drivers is not that large so it would only make a small impact on the overall problem.

Another solution that has been put forward by the Federation of Wholesale Distributors and the ministers is to have a temporary extension of driver’s hours to help with the shortage. These would be potentially limited to multi-drop areas and regions that have a serious food shortage.

Work has been done to try and help the problem by raising the driver’s wages to try and entice more drivers and sending out depot staff in non-HGV vehicles to tackle some of the little orders but these are small actions that may not be enough to fix the bigger problem at hand.

Bielby warns “The UK government needs to act very quickly” to prevent the issue from becoming a crisis.

Having a shortage of trucks will have an impact on our day to day lives unless a solution is found that can either improve the delivery process or more people are found to help deliver goods around the country. 

Another problem that drivers can face is breaking down whilst delivering, that’s why companies that can offer services where semi-truck repair near me can happen and will prevent downtime for a driver as much as possible.