The UK transport industry talks a lot about HGV driver shortages.
We are told there are not enough vocational drivers. That the workforce is shrinking. That demand has outpaced supply. The headlines are familiar, and they are repeated often enough to feel true.
But they are only part of the story.
There are drivers out there. Plenty of them. Since COVID, thousands of people have been funded through Category C and C+E training. Licences have been issued. Tests have been passed. On paper, the shortage should have eased.
Yet many of those newly qualified drivers are struggling to find work.
The reason is simple and rarely acknowledged. They lack experience. And the industry no longer knows how to give it to them.
THIS is the missing middle.
