A couple of months ago, I wrote about the commercial pressures crushing small operators. This month, let’s tackle the question everyone pretends to ask but no one wants to answer: why can’t we attract and retain drivers?
In my opinion the truth isn’t mysterious. It’s not generational. It’s not cultural. It’s structural, and we built it.
Being an owner driver today demands more skill, more compliance and more responsibility than ever before, yet the financial return hasn’t kept pace. When a job carries enormous risk but shrinking reward, people walk away. Drivers manage fatigue, navigate complex freight systems, handle loads worth hundreds of thousands, absorb rising operating costs and comply with layers of regulation. But we are not paid as professionals. We are paid as if we are disposable.
And the lifestyle? It’s chaos. Transport is one of the last industries where you can’t plan your life. Start times shift daily. Hours blow out. Fatigue rules clash with commercial pressure. You can’t commit to family events, sport or even a regular sleep pattern. Younger workers look at this and walk the other way, and who could blame them?
Even getting into the industry has become a barrier course. A new owner driver faces steep costs for licence upgrades, medicals, training insurance and cost of equipment. It’s a closed loop that keeps new blood out. Those who do get in face long hours, unpredictable income and a culture that still treats drivers and owner drivers as the bottom rung.
Then there’s enforcement, the part no one outside the industry believes until they see it. Drivers are penalised for minor administrative slip ups like a missing odometer entry from months earlier or exceeding hours by minutes. They endure cab searches as if they’re criminals. Some even face inspectors turning up at their homes to hunt for documentation and turn up logbook pages with minor errors.
No other industry treats its workforce this way. And here’s the kicker: we were told it would change. Under former NHVR CEO Sal Petroccitto, the regulator publicly stated it would stop pursuing nitpicking offences that offer no real safety benefit. That commitment mattered – it acknowledged that enforcement should target genuine risk, not paperwork trivia.
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But under the current CEO, the NHVR appears to be drifting backwards. Drivers are again being pinged for technicalities that have nothing to do with safety. This is the same organisation that claims it is competent enough to administer the fitness to drive laws. Should they really be trusted with that responsibility when they can’t distinguish genuine safety issues from clerical errors? It’s hard to attract people to an industry where the regulator seems more interested in catching you out than keeping you safe.
The contracting chain is another slow burn disaster. Owner drivers sit at the end of a chain now crowded with freight forwarders, brokers, digital platforms, subcontractors and sub subcontractors. Every layer takes a slice and pushes down pressure, but only one layer – the last in line – carries the risk. Until the chain is cleaned up, nitpicking offences are removed and responsibility is shared fairly, retention will remain a fantasy.
Meanwhile, costs explode while rates stand still. Fuel, tyres, insurance, maintenance and registration have all gone up. Rates haven’t. Owner drivers are expected to absorb cost increases indefinitely. Employees see their real wages going backwards. No one stays in a job where the numbers don’t add up.
And the workforce is ageing out. The average Australian truck driver is pushing 60. We’ve relied on the same generation for decades, and they’re retiring faster than we’re replacing them. This isn’t a labour shortage. It’s a succession crisis.
Underpinning all of this is a lack of respect. Drivers today are monitored, tracked, audited and scrutinised more than ever, yet still treated as if they’re unskilled. You can’t attract people to a profession that refuses to see itself as one. You can’t retain people you penalise for the smallest of errors. And before anyone waves the safety flag, remember: drivers care more about safety than anyone else in the supply chain.
So where does that leave us? We can’t attract or retain drivers because the job has become harder, riskier and more expensive, while the rewards have become smaller, slower and less reliable.
If we want people to choose this industry, we need to fix payment terms, rate structures, training pathways, contracting chains, work life balance and, above all, the way we value the people who keep the country moving. Until then, the driver shortage won’t be a mystery. It will be the predictable result of an industry and lawmakers that refuse to value the people at its core.
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