Quote:
Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo
The good die young I guess,
We've got you for the next 250 years 
I'd consider giving it a go given I've got no family holding me back from being away from home 24/7 and no qualms about sleeping in the truck on the side of the road.
But by the time you pay thousands for the licensing, the responsibilities you have, the crappy wages and being treated like a pleb, I'm better off getting treated like a pleb and getting paid more to drive my desk in Melbourne instead.
The trick is finding the desk that pays even more |
It won’t hurt having a go. Something to always fall back on if you ever need to. You might like it enough to make a career out of it.
Granted you won’t walk straight into an MC interstate job.
There is no barrier for someone to sit their heavy licences through a driving school and apply for one of the thousands of MR/HR jobs on offer. Progression doesn’t take long. It doesn’t take long to learn the ropes and the job is as hard as you make it.
When I was building a house I went living in a truck for 12 months to avoid finding somewhere to live with strangers, pay through the nose for my own rental, or live with family.
When I was saving for my first property around ten years ago I was living in a truck and had no real expenses.
A lot if not most truck drivers I deal with are negative, and extremely precious. Think of petulant teenage girls.
I’ve since gone back into a truck workshop and deal with them every day.
As for the skills shortage, this effects all essential services/trades/professions doesn’t it.
Health and education sectors, automotive and engineering, building and construction, commercial pilots, paramedics etc.
This despite population growth of around 50k pa.
This is exacerbated in the trades due to unreliable tradesmen and poor or incompetent workmanship.
On the other hand there seems to be plenty of baristas, artists, cafe and bar staff, illiterate bias journalists presenting their opinion as opposed to facts, tax sucking troughers contracted or employed by local and central governments to study and promote climate change, anything ‘ist’ or phobic, finding ways to increase red tape for job security and further job creation for the unproductive.
Why do the sectors facing skills shortages need to fill jobs that are physical and involve long hours, or require years of training and constant upskill... Are a lot of people coming into the workforce over the past twenty or so years afraid of hard work and prefer to take the easy option?
That survey reads that the industry needs to cut down their hours to improve work/life balance. No doubt they expect drivers to be paid extra to compensate. They’ll be the first to complain of extra costs to the end user when more trucks and drivers are needed to alleviate the original drivers so the same amount of freight can be moved.