The new era of electric trucks could solve the industry’s driver shortage problem by providing the kind of modern ride that a younger generation expects, says industry consultant Kylie Johnson.
Johnson spent a year travelling on a Churchill Fellowship and saw the pull that electric prime movers had on people in Europe and the US.
“Electric trucks generally look a lot more modern, a lot cleaner, it looks like a modern industry…They just look like the future and I think that does help with recruiting new drivers,” she told The Driven.
“[For example] the cab of the Volvo was beautiful, it was really well appointed. It felt pleasurable, it really felt like we were respecting our drivers. I really think that’s very powerful.”
Australia is in desperate need of more people to drive trucks.
Last year the industry was short 28,000 drivers, and of those still working almost half were older than 55 years, according to the National Truck Drivers Association.
Just 4 per cent of the 190,000 people driving trucks in Australia are women, suggesting some big structural barriers to participation.
The industry has significant work ahead to change the perception among both women and young people if it wants to bridge these gaps.
For Volvo’s Matt Wood, an obvious solution is to attract women to the industry.
Several years ago Volvo commissioned research about why women weren’t joining the industry, and the main response was they’d never considered it as an option. Following that was not knowing how to gain the skills and licences needed to get a job, and then how to go about successfully landing a good job in a male-dominated industry.
Wood says a partnership with WomenCan Australia, Wodonga TAFE and Transport Women Australia is working on addressing those issues, but providing a job track and skills training for women.
“[Training women] gives [companies] a bigger talent pool, but they’re seeing the positives that having a diverse workforce brings,” he says.
“A lot of the time that is workplace culture, productivity. A of the feedback is that women tend to be more mechanically sympathetic, so they do less damage to the equipment.”
Wood and Johnson both agree, however, that if the industry really wants to attract women, it will need to sort out the toileting situation on long haul routes.
“One of the biggest challenges especially on long hulk routes is facilities. Even men will complain about the lack of facilities,” Wood says.
“The reality is if you’re going to bring more women into your workplace, you need to provide them with more facilities. You can’t just expect them to suck it up and be one of the boys.”
Electric trucks are coming, fast
There aren’t many electric prime movers in Australia yet — Wood says Volvo itself only has about 150, Windrose has trucks on the road now, and Tesla’s version is nearly ready for mass manufacturing — because the ‘how’ on charging these hasn’t been solved yet.
New South Wales (NSW) is taking the issue very seriously by putting electric trucks at the centre of its EV strategy, and it’s already backing what will become Australia’s biggest truck depot under its Investor Front Door program.
In March the federal government promised to fund three truck depots in Melbourne that will be able to charge up to 100 vehicles at a time.
At the smaller end of the market dealing with city transport, a price war is emerging as a flood of new electric vans coming into Australia.
These new vehicles — quiet, clean, modern — may further change perceptions, says Caitlin Barlow, general manager of her family’s trucking company JATEC Transport.
She says there has already been a huge shift in who is joining the industry thanks to the emergence of automatic gear boxes, and the changing look of the vehicles might be another recruitment boost.
“I do think there is a correlation between what trucks look like and how they operate, and who then is comfortable to join the industry,” she told The Driven.
“By having a different look and feel of what fleets are in the trucking industry, there would be a change in the type of people who join and I would hope that would reflect younger people and women.”
Wood points out that Volvo’s trucks have a really good stereo, “so it’s really good to be able to hear it” because the cab is so quiet in comparison with diesel vehicles.
“We had a customer advertising for a driver recently and it was specifically for an electric truck,” Wood says.
“The gentlemen who got it applied specifically because it was an electric. After driving diesels he wanted to take on a role using cutting edge technology, and quiet.”
Rachel Williamson is a science and business journalist, who focuses on climate change-related health and environmental issues.