Logistics companies complain of an acute shortage of truckers

There is an acute shortage of truck drivers in Russia. Vadim Filatov, deputy general director of the transport and logistics company PEK, spoke about this in an interview with Vedomosti. Russian transport companies, according to the PEC, lack about 60,000 drivers, the shortage in the company itself is about 5% of the regular number of heavy truck drivers.

“After the collapse of the USSR, the number of driving schools that train truck drivers decreased, the profession was excluded from the system of secondary specialized education, and its prestige decreased. Young people are less likely to get behind the wheel of a truck due to working conditions: the driver spends most of the month on the road, away from family and loved ones,” Filatov explains. According to him, there is a “catastrophic shortage” in the industry of drivers of trucks weighing over 3.5 tons (category E). The top manager added that, according to the results of a consolidated survey of the largest companies in the industry, the deficit increased from 15 to 21% over five years.