On paper, this is the kind of initiative the industry says it needs. The Road Haulage Association has long argued that the UK needs around 60,000 new HGV drivers a year over the next five years to offset retirements, attrition and rising demand.
But Evri’s announcement also raises an even more awkward question. If operators are still struggling to fill cabs, is the real problem a shortage of qualified drivers or the fact that too many experienced ones can get better pay, better conditions and a better life elsewhere?
Recruitment is only half the story
Evri’s move is simple enough. External applicants can now join a training route that previously focused on internal progression, gain their HGV licences and move into driving roles through the company’s programme.
That addresses one part of the labour problem: getting more people qualified to drive trucks. What it does not address is why vacancies remain so persistent. Department for Transport data for the fourth quarter of 2024 showed that 24% of HGV businesses had driver vacancies. The three most common reasons were familiar: better pay or benefits elsewhere, drivers leaving the industry, and retirement.
If better pay elsewhere is still one of the main reasons vacancies stay open, then the problem is not only supply. It is also competitiveness. The industry is not just short of drivers. It is losing them.
Training more people into the job does not automatically change that.
Missed loads and a leaky pipeline
The effect on operators is immediate. Among firms with driver vacancies in the DfT survey, one in five said they had missed deliveries in the previous week because they did not have enough drivers.
That is the real pain for hauliers. Not theory. Not labour-market jargon. Loads that do not move, service failures and lost revenue.
For drivers, the pain looks different. Relatively low pay, long and irregular hours, nights away from home and poor treatment on the road have been part of the story for years. A government review of earlier driver-shortage measures pointed directly to poor working conditions, inadequate facilities and low pay as reasons drivers leave the industry.
None of this is new. The same complaints keep coming back because the same problems keep staying in place.
That is why schemes like this often look like only part of the answer. They may bring more people into the trade, but they do not fix the reasons others leave. The pipeline is being filled, but it is still leaking.
Painful lack of proper truck parks and facilities
If there is one issue that sums up drivers’ daily frustration, it is roadside facilities. Transport Focus’s latest Lorry Drivers’ Facilities Survey found that 62% of drivers were dissatisfied with the quality of the facilities available to them, up from 49% a year earlier. Six in ten said there were not enough suitable places to stop on their routes.
For a job that routinely means nights away from home, that matters. Secure parking, clean showers, decent food and somewhere safe to rest are not extras. They are basic conditions. When those basics are poor, the retention problem feeds itself. Drivers who feel the job does not value them once they stop driving are more likely to look elsewhere.
Operators are right to say they need more drivers. Drivers are right to say the job needs fixing. Both are true. But if the sector keeps trying to solve the shortage mainly with recruitment, while pay pressure and poor facilities keep pushing drivers away, the same shortage will keep coming back.
A practical fix but only for part of the problem
None of this makes Evri’s academy meaningless. It is a real response to a real staffing problem, and other operators may well do the same. Companies that invest in training are putting money into a route that many new drivers would otherwise struggle to access.
But the industry should be honest about what these programmes can and cannot do. They can widen the recruitment funnel. They cannot, on their own, fix the reasons drivers leave. And as long as the main reasons for vacancies remain better pay elsewhere, drivers exiting the sector and retirement, the UK’s driver shortage looks at least as much like a retention crisis as a training problem.
Training more drivers may help fill the pipeline. But if pay, parking and working conditions keep pushing drivers away, the industry will still be fixing the wrong end of the problem.
