HGV Driver: The Missing Middle

The HGV Driver Conundrum

The UK transport industry and the press talk a lot about HGV driver shortages.

We are told there are not enough vocational HGV 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 very definition of ‘the missing middle‘.

For decades, experience was passed on informally. New drivers learned by watching, listening, asking questions, and making small mistakes under the watchful eye of someone who had already made them. That knowledge lived in yards, depots, and cabs. It was human, imperfect, and effective.

Disappeared

In the transport industry of today, that system has quietly disappeared.

In its place we have more regulation, more compliance, more monitoring, and less tolerance for learning curves. The job has become heavier mentally, even as the physical demands have changed. For many an older HGV driver, the pleasure has been drained out of the work. Faced with ever increasing bureaucracy and scrutiny, many have chosen to step away earlier than planned.

The result is an ageing workforce leaving the industry, and a generation of new drivers who have licences but no pathway.

This is not a recruitment problem. It is a replacement problem.

What is missing is a structured, supported transition between passing a test and being trusted with responsibility. Between knowing the rules and applying judgement. Between qualification and confidence to perform.

HGV Driver Experience. Guided by HGV Drivers

Experience cannot be rushed, but it can be guided.

There is a quiet irony here. At the very moment when experience is most needed, it is being allowed to drift out of the industry without being captured or transferred. Decades of judgement, situational awareness, and practical knowledge are leaving cabs for the last time, with no mechanism to carry them forward.

That is a loss we will feel for years. But I believe there is a better way.

One that allows experienced drivers to step out of full time driving without leaving the industry entirely, one that gives new drivers the confidence and competence they need while still allowing vehicles to earn revenue and one that reduces risk for operators rather than increasing it.

Call it mentoring, onboarding, or HGV Driver experience transfer if you like. The name matters less than the principle.

Rebuilding the Missing Middle

We need to rebuild the middle.

Not with more paperwork, but with people. With calm presence, with judgement explained rather than assumed and with professionalism modelled in real working conditions, not classrooms alone.

This is not about nostalgia. It is about continuity.

An industry that cannot pass its knowledge forward eventually forgets how it works.

And when that happens, no amount of recruitment will fix it.

TSTS.Training