Lot: delivery companies struggle to recruit drivers

In the parking lot of Quercy PHM, a Lot road transport company based in Mercuès, three trucks are stationary. The reason: the lack of delivery drivers. The company makes deliveries throughout the Lot department, for large and medium-sized stores, city center stores, individuals and farmers. 23 daily rounds, for 14 drivers. A correct ratio, for the operations manager of Quercy PHM, Loïc Arnaud, but which does not allow him to develop. “There are tours that I would like to expand or create, to relieve others that are starting to be very busy. I’ve been looking to do two more tours for a year, but I don’t have anyone. “There are no development solutions. I even have clients who ask us to work with them, but we don’t have the means in terms of personnel. Whereas the material means, we have them”, notes Loïc Arnaud. And the few hires are not enough to reverse the trend: “There are people who leave for personal reasons, and new ones who arrive. But the few people we meet just allow us to be able to recover the workforce” , he continues. The company says it is in constant search, in particular via the interim boxes.

In Montat, the Jardel company, whose head office is located on the outskirts of Toulouse, is encountering the same type of problem. “On heavy goods vehicles, we have people who hold the road, but as soon as someone has to be replaced, it’s complicated. It’s a phenomenon that started a little before the Covid, and which is growing. . […] We always manage to help out if necessary, but it’s not the solution we were hoping for”, regrets Hichame Chafik, operations assistant on the Lot site, which has 14 heavy goods vehicle drivers. light vehicles, this is another concern that arises: “The casting is more complicated. It’s hard to find good elements,” he said.

“We don’t know the job from the inside”

A situation that professionals partly explain by a lack of knowledge of the profession. “When you see a truck passing on the road, you don’t realize what’s behind it,” notes Loïc Arnaud. “Everyone knows the job, but we don’t know it from the inside. There are several different procedures for deliveries, with a lot of preparation in the morning”, points out Hichame Chafik.

And these recruitment difficulties are not new. “This is a problem that we have been encountering for several years, and which tends to intensify at present”, confirms Jérome Bessière, regional delegate of the FNTR Occitanie Pyrénées (National Federation of Road Transport), to which the department du Lot is attached. For him, other explanatory factors are added: “On the one hand, job creation is going faster than the number of new entrants to the profession. To this, we must also add the age pyramid aging”. Finally, another obstacle: competition. “You should also know that in France, more than half of heavy goods vehicles do not belong to carriers, but for example to manufacturers who have their own fleet. They are not registered in the register of carriers, because they only transport their own goods. And they no longer hesitate to come and poach drivers who are stationed in companies in the road transport of goods.”