According to Esendex, Black Friday online shopping deliveries in England are going to be hampered by a shortage of 11,000 delivery drivers and 10,000 HGV drivers. With just 5% of the current HGV driver workforce identified as female in the UK, there is a vast untapped potential workforce that could, if attracted and retained properly, resolve the HGV driver shortage here, in Europe and the US.
Research published in 2022 by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) suggests that women make better drivers than men. The ATRI paper Predicting Truck Crash Involvement, showed that women make safer truck drivers, committing fewer traffic violations and having fewer crashes. That’s similar to the widely observed phenomenon of women car drivers making fewer insurance claims. In short, not only could women fill empty HGV drivers roles but they could result in better bottom lines for those who employ them.
Recruitment and retention of women drivers
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows improved female driver numbers over the years, peaking at just over 8% of the US driver population in 2022, higher than the European average of 5% and even with the drop to just under 7% in 2023, still better than across the Atlantic. It is still a very heavily male-dominated industry even so.
The ATRI published a report earlier this year, Identifying and Mitigating the Challenges Faced by Women Truck Drivers, that involved interviews with female truck drivers and carriers’ representatives. The table below shows some of the striking differences in perceptions about female driver recruitment and retention:
The top five points are most interesting as it shows the big differences in perceptions between carriers’ representatives’ perceptions and the reality on the ground. In the report’s conclusions it looked at recruitment and retention of female drivers. Let’s take a look at these now.
Recruitment
Most US women entering the trade come in via family member recommendation. Positive publicity about female drivers is important in retention of drivers by companies too – this seems to be an important issue from end to end of the career.
Competitive and equal pay at trucking companies is a big draw for women. With Walmart offering more than $100,000 a year for experienced drivers in the US, and an average pay of 55% above minimum wage in Europe, this can be a serious income for a family, even if Mom (or Grandma more often) is out on the road most of the week.
Fair treatment in training is important too, with harassment even being reported at this stage of some women’s careers – this can be resolved with women training other women to drive at training centres.
Retention
The ATRI research showed that carriers with women-specific initiatives maintain a higher percentage of women drivers than those without. This includes marketing materials, mentorship programmes and involvement in women’s groups.
Inability to access exercise is an important factor in making females leave the industry, with 42.2% of those surveyed saying this is a problem they have daily. Poor diet and lack of exercise has been shown in other research to shorten drivers’ lives and give serious health problems later in life, something that European truck stops have only woken up to in recent years.
Access to safe parking is a serious problem both sides of the Atlantic. Planned electric vehicle charging parks in Europe will revolutionise this, but such infrastructure will take years to come on stream. Within this is the issue of clean toilets and washing facilities that affect males and females alike.
Allowing pets – specifically dogs – on an HGV is important, not least because a potential attacker is less likely to harass a woman with a dog, though tackling the loneliness of long hours at the wheel is another factor. Many US trucking companies permit pets with drivers already.
Harassment and discrimination is an issue faced every day by 17% of all female drivers surveyed vs 8.4% of men in the ATRI report. This is why few women really wanted exercise facilities in truck stops as that was identified as a common location for such difficulties. Unfortunately such issues come from the industry being so heavily dominated by men, but even so safety systems and personal security ranked as fourth in the women drivers’ issues in the table above where carriers ranked it second.
Family was cited as the biggest reason females end up leaving the job. Interestingly, by contrast variability of the job and independence were two of the biggest draws to becoming a truck driver. FaceTime, Zoom and so on were important to mitigate these while on the road, but the report found, “was the importance of organizing and planning. Whether it was planning their routes, schedules or time-off, ensuring a work-life balance between time away from home and being home or connected to home was critical.” Route optimisation so the driver begins and ends their week’s driving close to home would be one way to resolve this.
In conclusion, for a scenario where significant numbers of women are to enter the truck driving profession, there needs to be large scale structural change. For this to happen, more advocacy and mentoring by women for women is needed. If sufficient numbers of women can be attracted to and retained by the industry, driver shortages at key times like the current peak season could be a thing of the past.
Author: Richard Shrubb
Source: Ti Insights
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