News

Eastern European hauliers have been left so short of domestic truck drivers that they have been forced to turn to Asia to fill vacancies.

The revelation came at a European transport conference, the Truck Europe Forum, in Berlin last week, which discussed driver shortages across the Continent.

The UK has largely avoided the worst effects of the shortage through being able to call on this pool of Eastern European labour, as well as training initiatives, such as the young driver scheme.

Event organiser Claude Yvens said that operators in the Czech Republic and Hungary had both begun recruiting from Asia: "I have seen ads placed by Czech transport companies looking for Vietnamese drivers and now Indian drivers have been appearing in Hungary."

Yvens says: "I have not seen many trucks stood idle because there are no drivers available to drive them, but with an ageing workforce this scenario may happen sooner than you think."