Associations BGL and bdo Call for Reform of Professional Driver Training

There is a severe shortage of driving personnel in the road freight and bus sectors. As a result, customer inquiries in road freight and passenger transport cannot currently be met. The leading associations of the German bus and road freight transport sectors, the Federal Association of German Bus Companies (bdo) and the Federal Association of Goods Transport, Logistics and Waste Management (BGL), are calling for swift reforms to ensure basic supply in supply chains, school, local and long-distance passenger transport.

(Berlin/Frankfurt am Main) Currently, there is already a shortage of over 5,000 bus drivers in the bus sector. Due to the gap between insufficient new recruits and many retirements, over 10,000 job openings arise each year. With the planned transport transition, the shortage of driving personnel in the bus industry is expected to increase to a total of 76,000 missing bus drivers by 2030. In road freight transport, there is currently a shortage of more than 80,000 truck drivers. Since approximately 30,000 to 35,000 truck drivers retire each year, but only about 15,000 to 20,000 take up the profession anew, this difference alone exacerbates the shortage of driving personnel in logistics by about 15,000 missing truck drivers annually. Immediate support from politics is urgently needed for the bus industry and road freight transport.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the driver shortage problem. Instead, various measures must be combined at both the European and national levels. Therefore, bdo and BGL propose three central measures in a joint solution approach to quickly and effectively reduce unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles:

• Integrate the professional driver qualification into the driving training (2-in-1), meaning both trainings should be taught and tested together. This significantly shortens and reduces the cost of training – without negative effects on training quality.
• Allow qualified driving schools to conduct the theory and practical exams for driving training and professional driver qualification.
• Permit relevant foreign languages in the examination, possibly with the assistance of an interpreter.

bdo Managing Director Christiane Leonard stated: “The shortage of driving personnel poses a dramatic and complex challenge that cannot be addressed with a single measure, but rather only with a bundle of measures. The impacts threaten not only the supply chains but also the existing offerings in travel and school transport, as well as the planned expansion of public transport. The bdo considers the integration of the professional driver qualification into driving training to be essential. Access to the profession would be facilitated and made more attractive by reduced training costs, companies could train more personnel with their existing resources, and professional drivers would be ready for deployment more quickly.”

Prof. Dr. Dirk Engelhardt, BGL Board Spokesman, added: “The driver emergency is acutely threatening the supply of the population and the economy. If we want to avoid a supply collapse like in England, we urgently need a change in thinking at all levels. In addition to improving working and competitive conditions, this primarily means reducing the bureaucratic hurdles that have accumulated over decades. The old ties must be cut, and the profession of driver must become attractive again – for young and old, for locals as well as for immigrants, whom our companies can no longer do without.”

bdo and BGL see the proposed measures – especially the integration of the professional driver qualification into driving training – as a suitable and effective approach to curb the acute shortage of professional drivers. For this, politics must finally wake up and confront the driver shortage decisively. Otherwise, the supply of goods and passenger transport in Germany cannot be maintained for much longer.

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