LONDON \u2014 For more than three decades David Carden drove across England\u2019s Midlands, transporting tens of thousands of liters of fuel from holding tanks to service stations. The flammable liquid made it a dangerous job requiring skill and caution, but when he started the pay and the benefits were good, enabling him to support his young family.<\/p>\n
Gradually the conditions worsened for drivers. The hours got longer, roadside facilities deteriorated and the benefits were cut.<\/p>\n
\u201cEventually,\u201d Mr. Carden said, \u201cwe lost an awful lot of what made the job worth doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2017, he quit.<\/p>\n
Now, as a critical shortage of truck drivers has caused gas pumps to run dry across the country and disrupted the lives of thousands, Britons and their leaders in Parliament are delivering a plaintive message: We need you.<\/p>\n
The government is sending out a letter to nearly 1 million people who hold a license to drive a heavy goods vehicle, urging them back onto the road. And it is relaxing visa restrictions for thousands of foreign workers, in the hope of luring them into temporary work in Britain.<\/p>\n
But the government might find few people taking them up on the offers. Mr. Carden, 57, was firm in his resolve: \u201cThere is no chance I would go back into that industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
His disenchantment underscores the steep challenges facing the industry. Tens of thousands of drivers from the European Union have left the country \u2014 in large part because Brexit made it clear they were not wanted \u2014 and prospective drivers couldn\u2019t take their qualification tests for over a year because of the pandemic. Long dominated by men, the drivers industry has done little to add women to its ranks.<\/p>\n
As a result, Britain has a shortage of up to 100,000 truck drivers, according to the Road Haulage Association.<\/p>\n
For truck drivers who have long felt underappreciated and increasingly stressed by difficult work conditions, lower pay and neglected truck stops, the fact that employers are struggling to find workers wasn\u2019t a surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t think about lorry drivers until it all goes wrong,\u201d said Robert Booth, 50, a driver from Dover on England\u2019s southern coast.<\/p>\n
And plenty has gone wrong this week: People waited in long lines to get gas and some stations put limits on how much they could fill their tank. Others simply couldn\u2019t get to work because they didn\u2019t have gas or because traffic had built up around the stations, clogging roads. Some businesses, such as taxis and private ambulances, scaled back their services.<\/p>\n
The government put the army on standby, and on Thursday it said that some military personnel would begin helping to deliver fuel in the next few days.<\/p>\n
The emergence of long-overlooked drivers as an essential cog in the nation\u2019s economy is reminiscent of the first year of the pandemic. Workers who had been considered low-skilled and who were poorly paid \u2014 many of them migrants \u2014 captured the nation\u2019s attention and gained newfound respect. Across Britain, people came out onto their doorsteps to clap for National Health Service workers. Supermarket assistants and public transport employees were no longer invisible, and featured on the front covers of publications like British Vogue.<\/p>\n
Now, truck drivers are being heard, and recruited \u2014 so much so that Prime Minister Boris Johnson upended his post-Brexit immigration rules when he approved the issuance of five thousand temporary visas for foreign drivers until the end of the year.<\/p>\n
But the industry warns it is probably too little too late as they wait for the details.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the one hand, it\u2019s what we called on the government to do,\u201d said Rod McKenzie, the managing director of policy at the Road Haulage Association, which has been lobbying for looser visa restrictions and twice as many temporary visas. \u201cBut three months is a really small period of time for people to give up an existing job. It will barely scratch the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some drivers might be attracted back by higher pay and bonuses but there are no fast solutions to this problem which has been brewing for years. Brexit has turned away European Union drivers who can now find good pay and better roadside facilities on the continent, where driver shortages in countries like Poland and Germany are as bad or worse.<\/p>\n
There is a huge backlog of driving tests in Britain, the training is expensive and the industry hasn\u2019t succeeded in attracting a young work force. The average age of a trucker is about 50 and many of the government\u2019s letters will go through the doors of people who have retired or moved into management positions, Mr. McKenzie said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are not a pool of a hundred thousand people who will suddenly heed the call and return to arms,\u201d Mr. McKenzie said. \u201cWe\u2019ll get some of them, I hope. But there are no magic bullets here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Carden stopped driving a tanker truck about four years ago after that work was taken over by a large logistics company and there was more pressure to make deliveries faster. He now drives a van for a family business.<\/p>\n
Amid stiff competition for qualified truck drivers, some tanker drivers have switched to decent paying jobs doing less hazardous deliveries. When Mr. Carden left he said many of his peers also quit around the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re thinking, \u2018Why should I drive a 44,000-liter bomb around, when I can get the same money for delivering boxes of crisps into the supermarket?\u2019\u201d Mr. Carden said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe general public haven\u2019t appreciated this industry and the government hasn\u2019t either,\u201d he added. \u201cDrivers will spend nights away from home and the facilities that are offered to them are probably the poorest in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The conditions at truck stops are frequently cited as a reason more people, especially women, don\u2019t want to join the industry. Mr. Booth, the driver from Dover, is a so-called tramper \u2014 he picks up and drops off construction materials across long distances. He is typically on the road for five days at a time, and while the hours are grueling, he said he enjoys the sense of adventure. \u201cLet\u2019s be honest, we all still feel like an 8-year-old kid who wants to drive big trucks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But the industry has neglected the realities of life on the road for drivers, he said. At the stops, there are often dirty showers, not enough toilets and a lack of security. It can be difficult to find decent meals. Mr. Booth has a Facebook page dedicated to documenting the healthy meals he cooks while on the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe industry itself had taken for granted that we had a supply of cheaper labor from abroad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Convincing European workers to return to Britain will be hard because drivers have been treated badly and discriminated against, said Tomasz Orynski, 41, who drives trucks part-time in Scotland. He moved to Britain from Poland in 2005 but intends to move back to the European Union soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are being told all the time how you\u2019re a burden to this country,\u201d he said, referring to Britain. \u201cAll while the salaries were stagnating for a decade or more. So what do you do? You pack up and go back to your country, which over all those years developed rapidly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if some drivers decide to take up the temporary visas in Britain, it\u2019s unlikely they will be working for the full three months available because recruitment and relocation could take weeks. For the past seven years, Emil Gerasimov, the head of driving for Ideal Recruitment, has brought in drivers from abroad, particularly from Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. The temporary visas are unlikely to provide much relief.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would they leave a secure job in Europe to work here for three months?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Near London\u2019s Heathrow Airport, Steve Bowles runs Roy Bowles Transport, which moves cargo. The company is named after his father who started the business in the 1950s. It has about 40 vehicles and moves goods only within a 50-mile radius of the airport, meaning some of the harder aspects of the job, such as long nights on the road, are avoided.<\/p>\n
Like many businesses, Mr. Bowles has raised pay for his staff but said he still lacks the number of drivers he needs by about 20 percent. And the agency hiring costs have gone up \u201cthrough the roof sideways,\u201d he lamented.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very frustrating,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is our busiest time of the year and it\u2019s restricting that business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Bowles used to drive the trucks himself before he took over the management of the company with his sister. He, too, could soon be receiving a letter from the government asking him to return to driving. But at 67 with health challenges, he has no intention of getting back behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t go out driving,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I can\u2019t get the work covered with my drivers, what\u2019s the point of me going out leaving the office unattended.\u201d<\/p>\n