Scottish way to tackle truck driver shortage
Information that the British road haulage is experiencing an acute shortage of truck drivers has not been new for a long time. It is much more interesting the possible ways to tackle this issue. Among the recent proposals is to train and employ veterans and former soldiers for making a career in the transport sector.
Two years ago, Daren Wright established the charity Veterans into Logistics (ViL) in Scotland. The organisation aims to reduce unemployment among veterans and help ex-military communities to gain a successful career in the logistics or transport sector. Now the ViL is planning to set up a new training hub and base in Scotland to increase the number of former servicemen who got behind the wheel and, in such a way, reduce the chronic HGV driver shortage in the country.
“We already partner with transport firms in Scotland such as Muller Milk & Ingredients (formerly known as Robert Wiseman Dairies) and we are training veterans in Glasgow and as far as Inverness, but we would like to do more. There is a lot of ex-military personnel there, but we can’t do it on our own. We need to work in partnership with haulage firms,” said Daren Wright, ViL’s founder.
For ex-soldiers, who had a very structured career before, it is difficult to find a new job after leaving the Armed Forces. “We have trained many drivers and driving instructors ourselves through the Tilbury on Thames Trust and various other charities. As an ex-service leaver myself I recognise the skills needed in this industry, and this is reflected in the number of ex-service employees we have in Scotland ourselves,” added Brian Kenny, head of training and sales for Scotland and Northern Ireland at the Road Haulage Association (RHA). According to the umbrella organisation, there are many real examples of former servicemen who have used this path on leaving the military, some of them even work at RHA’s training department and help their colleagues to find themselves in the future.
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