The problem has been known for years, but now it’s getting serious: the chronic lack of truck drivers is causing severe difficulties in Germany. Bottlenecks in the food supply are imminent. And someone has to take away the rubbish.
The term “skills shortage” has been around for a long time. More than 20 years ago, the then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder wanted to lure IT specialists from India to Germany with a green card.
Before the Corona crisis, Jens Spahn traveled to Mexico, Vietnam and the Philippines as Federal Minister of Health to recruit nurses for German clinics and old people’s homes. And associations and economic researchers have also been warning for years that Germany is getting old and that there are not enough young people for industry and trade.
Another blatant example is the lack of truck drivers, which is threatening the European economy. Around 70 percent of German freight traffic is handled by truck. The freight train on the rails only plays a secondary role in logistics.
Instead, truck traffic is increasing by over one percent every year, according to the Federal Office for Goods Transport (BAG). And according to the Federal Association of Road Haulage, Logistics and Disposal (BGL), there is currently a shortage of 60,000 to 80,000 professional drivers. It’s getting tight.
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Unscheduled deliveries are logistically difficult to manage. If the retail trade needs twice as much olive oil or toilet paper than before because of sudden hoarding, then the supermarket shelves will initially remain empty.
dr Eric Schweitzer is the owner and CEO of the Berlin ALBA Group, one of the leading environmental service providers and suppliers of raw materials in Europe with an annual turnover of around 1.3 billion euros and 5400 employees. ALBA is also the name sponsor of the current German basketball champions. Schweitzer was President of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) from 2013 to 2021 and has been Honorary President of the DIHK and the IHK Berlin since 2021.
And if a truck driver in my company falls ill, the colleagues have to work an extra shift so that the garbage cans can still be picked up. And it’s not just freight traffic that’s increasing every year, but also the amount of waste. The logistics system is extremely sewn to the edge. It won’t go well for much longer.
The shortage of truck drivers in Great Britain should have been an alarm signal for German politicians when supermarket shelves remained empty there last year. It wasn’t just Brexit that discouraged many truck drivers from working on the island: there are too few across Europe.
And it is likely to get even worse: around 480,000 professional drivers were working in Germany in 2021. More than a third (35 percent) was at least 55 years old, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office. This means that the proportion of the 55-plus age group among truck drivers is significantly higher than among the employed as a whole (25 percent). As a result, many more truck drivers retire every year than young drivers take their place.
But it’s not just among long-distance drivers that things are looking bad for young people: there are also no young drivers in the waste disposal industry. And over time, the older colleagues find it increasingly difficult to go on tour in wind and weather, rain or snow to collect the heavy waste containers.
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In extreme cases, the waste cannot be picked up for weeks simply because drivers are absent or sick. Then mountains of rubbish like those in Rome or on many a Greek island are also threatening here in Germany.
The reasons for the driver shortage? In the past, truck drivers were usually younger men who liked to be on the road – “on the move” – as long-distance drivers.
Today, young people are no longer willing to spend so much time away from home and family. As a result, fewer and fewer people are getting a truck driver’s license. And driving a garbage compactor is no longer for everyone either.
Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, more truck drivers have been lost. Not only from Ukraine itself, but also from Poland, Belarus and Russia. And: Another reason for the lack of qualified drivers is the suspension of conscription in 2011. Many conscripts used to take the opportunity to get their truck driver’s license for free with the Bundeswehr.
In the medium term there are no alternatives to the truck driver: autonomous driving and fully digital driving assistants are still dreams of the future.
The freight rail network of Deutsche Bahn is also fully utilized and the new construction of railway infrastructure is getting stuck in the German bureaucracy jungle. So there is no way around more truck drivers if Germany does not want to end up in a supply and disposal crisis.
The Merkel government’s “skilled worker immigration law” allows qualified workers from abroad to look for a job in Germany for six months. But the targeted number of 20,000 immigrating skilled workers per year is too low and will not be reached in reality.
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According to the Bertelsmann Foundation, by 2060 at least 260,000 more people will have to move to Germany than emigrate every year in order to meet the demand on the labor market and refill the empty coffers of the German social security system.
According to the Bertelsmann Foundation, this is the only way to limit the demographically induced decline in employees to an “acceptable level”.
But Germany is obviously not attractive enough for skilled workers from abroad. Attempts by the logistics and waste disposal industry, supported by the employment agency, to recruit EU foreigners for truck driver training regularly fail.
