What Should You Be Doing Now to Attract HGV Drivers?

What Should You Be Doing Now to Attract HGV Drivers?

If you’re planning for peak, covering holidays or simply struggling to get enough HGV drivers into your operation, increasing the pay rate isn’t always the only answer.

Pay obviously matters, but when drivers decide which jobs they want to take, they’re looking at the job as a whole.

The type of work, vehicles, shift pattern, amount of manual handling, how much notice they get and how they’re treated when they arrive on site can all influence whether a driver accepts a shift – and, more importantly, whether they come back.

Some of those things you can change and some you can’t.

The key is understanding how your job compares with similar HGV driving work in your local area and whether the rate you’re offering reflects what you’re asking drivers to do.

What type of HGV work are you offering?

This is one of the biggest factors affecting driver attraction but it’s unlikely that you can change the type of work, at the end of the day – the job is the job.

A straightforward trunk from one RDC to another is a very different job to making store deliveries with a double-deck trailer and unloading roll cages.

What you can do is:

Make sure your pay rate is competitive against other local businesses offering the same type of driving work.
If you're recruiting for store deliveries, look at what other store delivery operations are paying. If you're recruiting for tramping, compare your package with other tramping roles. The same applies to multi-drop, containers, general haulage and trunking.

We often see businesses benchmarking their rate against general HGV Class 1 rates in their area. That doesn’t always give you a useful comparison.

The more demanding or less popular the work is, the more important the rate becomes.

Temporary and peak requirements may need a higher rate

It’s also worth remembering that your agency rate doesn’t necessarily need to mirror the hourly rate of your permanent drivers.

If you only need additional drivers for a few weeks to cover summer holidays, Christmas peak or a sudden increase in volume, you’re asking somebody to choose short-term work without the same security as a permanent employee.

To attract experienced drivers away from other regular work, you may need to pay a premium. That can sometimes mean paying temporary drivers more than your permanent workforce during particularly busy periods.

What are your vehicles and trailers like?

Drivers spend a significant part of their working week in your vehicles, so their condition makes a difference.

Clean, well-maintained vehicles with equipment that works properly make a job more attractive.

If you offer tramping work, this becomes even more important. Drivers could be spending four or five nights away from home in that cab.

Is there enough storage?
Is the night heater working?
Is the mattress in good condition?
Is the cab clean?
Does the vehicle have the equipment a driver needs to make nights away reasonably comfortable?

You may not be in a position to change your fleet simply because you're struggling to recruit, and older vehicles don't automatically make a job unattractive.

But you do need to be realistic about how your fleet compares with other companies competing for the same drivers.

If another local haulier is offering similar work, similar hours and newer, better-equipped vehicles, there needs to be a reason for a driver to choose your job instead. Sometimes that reason will be the pay rate.

How much work can you guarantee?

One of the biggest advantages you can offer an agency driver isn't always more money. It's regular work.

If we can offer a driver five shifts a week for the next eight weeks, with shifts booked in advance, that job is much easier to recruit for than an assignment where we don't know whether we'll need them until the afternoon before.

Drivers have bills to pay just like everybody else.

If they know they're going to get regular shifts, they don't need to keep looking elsewhere to fill the gaps in their week.
Regular bookings also help with retention. The driver gets to know your routes, your vehicles, your transport team and how your site operates. In return, you get a driver who already understands the job.

Of course, not every transport operation can predict its requirements weeks in advance.

We deal with short-notice requirements every day and they can be covered. But if you regularly need drivers at short notice, particularly for less desirable shifts, you may need to offer a higher rate to compensate for that lack of certainty.

How much manual handling is involved?

Be honest about this from the beginning.

If drivers are going to be unloading cages, using a pump truck, completing multiple drops or doing a significant amount of physical work, tell us so we can tell them.

There are plenty of HGV drivers who are happy with physical roles, and some actually prefer a more active job.
But it does reduce your potential driver pool.
A driver who has spent years doing straightforward RDC trunking may have no interest in unloading cages at stores – regardless of whether they hold exactly the same HGV Class 1 licence as somebody who enjoys that type of work.

This is another reason why comparing HGV rates based on licence class alone doesn't really work.

If your role involves considerably more physical work than another Class 1 job five miles away, but both pay the same rate, you're likely to have a smaller pool of drivers to recruit from.

How much HGV experience do you actually need?

If you're struggling to attract enough drivers, review your experience requirements.

Do you genuinely need a minimum of two years' HGV experience?

Is it an insurance requirement?
Is it necessary because of the complexity of the work?
Or is it simply a requirement that has always been there?

Newly qualified HGV drivers and drivers with limited experience can find it difficult to get their first opportunity.

That means experience itself has value to them.
A new-pass driver may be prepared to accept a lower rate because they're gaining something in return: proper HGV driving experience that will open up more opportunities in the future.
This won't be appropriate for every operation.

But where the work, insurance and risk profile allow it, introducing assessments, training or mentoring for less experienced drivers can give you access to a much larger pool of candidates.

You may also find that the drivers you give an opportunity to are some of the easiest to retain.

How much notice do you give your agency drivers?

If you can book your drivers in advance, do it.

Even if you can't confirm exact start times, letting your agency know that you'll need three drivers Monday to Friday next week gives them a much better chance of keeping good drivers available for you.

Last-minute bookings are part of temporary recruitment. We expect them.

But there's a difference between an occasional urgent requirement and running your entire agency workforce on a day-by-day basis when the work could have been booked earlier.

If a good driver has a choice between a client who has already guaranteed them work next Tuesday and one who might need them, they're likely to take the guaranteed shift.

The more certainty you can give drivers, the easier it becomes to build a regular agency workforce.

How do you treat your agency drivers?

This is probably one of the easiest things to improve – and it doesn't require an increase in the pay rate.

Agency drivers should feel like part of your team while they're working on your site.

That doesn't mean they need to be treated exactly the same as somebody who has worked for you for ten years but it does mean getting the basics right such as giving them a proper induction, speaking to them respectfully, making sure they understand the job and giving them the information they need to complete it.

Route planning matters too. If agency drivers consistently get the worst routes, the oldest vehicles or the jobs nobody else wants, they notice.

A good reputation amongst drivers makes recruitment considerably easier. When we can call a driver and say, “You've worked there before and you know it's a good job,” filling that next shift becomes much simpler.

So, what actually makes an HGV driving job attractive?

There isn't one answer.

Two companies can both advertise HGV Class 1 work at £20 per hour and get completely different recruitment results.

One might offer regular Monday-to-Friday trunking, good vehicles, no unloading and a rota booked several weeks ahead.
The other might offer ad-hoc store deliveries, heavy unloading, changing start times and only confirm shifts the day before.

That's why asking “What's the going rate for a Class 1 driver?” isn't really enough.

The better question is:

“What rate do we need to pay to attract and retain good drivers for this particular job?”

What should transport managers review before recruiting HGV drivers?

If you know you're going to need additional drivers over the next few months, look at your current offering before you start recruiting.

Review:

Your rate against companies offering similar work locally
The type of work and amount of manual handling involved
The quality and condition of your vehicles and trailers
Whether tramping vehicles are properly equipped
Your shift patterns and start times
How much work you can guarantee
How far in advance you can book drivers
Whether your experience requirements are genuinely necessary
How agency drivers are treated when they're on site
Whether good agency drivers actually want to return

You don't need to have the easiest job, newest fleet and highest pay rate in the area to attract good HGV drivers.

The parts of the job you can improve, improve them. For the parts you can't change, make sure your rate is competitive enough to attract drivers despite them.

Need Help Attracting HGV Drivers?

At Elite, we recruit HGV drivers every day, so we know what drivers are looking for and what they're being offered elsewhere.

We can help you benchmark your rates, look at how your opportunity compares with the local market and give you realistic feedback on what could make your vacancies easier to fill.

And if you're expecting requirements to increase for peak, the best time to start that conversation isn't when you're already short of drivers.

It's now.

Speak to the Elite Driving Team: