ECTA is launching an ECTA workgroup to tackle “driver shortage”
To give the driver shortage topic the right level of focus and priority, ECTA decided this week to launch a new ECTA workgroup on “driver shortage”.
The shortage of chemical truck drivers has meanwhile passed a threshold level and becomes a real industry challenge to move chemicals across Europe. Both shippers and transport partners will urgently need to adjust to this new reality whereby the availability of truck drivers remains limited. Moreover, all stakeholders will need to rethink their operational processes and how to organize logistics by improving the utilization and productivity of chemical drivers.
ACtion plans
This new ECTA workgroup is planned to kick-off mid-June. It aims to create an actionable, ECTA best practice guideline with “hands on” recommendations on how to increase the overall driver utilization time and describing industry best practice solutions.
In addition, this ECTA workgroup will reflect on a communication plan on how to improve the overall image of the chemical truck driver profession.
Please note that Cefic also started a new task force on “driver shortage & well being” at the start of 2022 whereby ECTA members are actively participating. During the last 2 months, it turned out that the shipper’s participation and engagement level to this Cefic task force was below expectations. Furthermore the scope was shifting towards “waiting time measurements” and “driver well-being”. While these focus area’s are also important and very complementary, they do not tackle the real carriers problem on how to improve the driver utilization time and reduce the driver waiting times.
This new ECTA task force will create this extra new focus and will continue to run in parallel with the Cefic task force. “Driver shortage” is a multi-dimensional opportunity and the final solution lays in a closer collaboration between shippers and carriers while rethinking and questioning some former logistics process & practices. Driver shortage in chemical logistics has evolved to a structural industry problem and will no longer resolve itself like it did in the past.