Modernising transport starts with people

Lyall Cresswell, Founder and CEO of TEG and Trustd, states that with a shortage of drivers, the solution is not to add more trucks; instead, we should utilise the existing personnel and capacity we have

Modernising transport is talked about as a technology story. Cleaner trucks, automated depots, driverless vehicles on the motorway. All of it matters. I have spent 26 years building technology for this industry, and it has shown me one thing: technology can make freight move far more efficiently, but it takes people to make it happen. Without the people who drive these trucks, plan these loads and keep freight moving, the cleanest fleet in the world will sit idle.

Let’s start with the scale of the problem, because it is stark. The International Road Transport Union (IRU) puts the shortfall of truck drivers in Europe at around 502,000 in 2025. This is a deepening structural problem, and demographics are driving it. Roughly one third of Europe’s truck drivers are over 55 and fewer than 5% are under 25. The workforce is retiring faster than it is being replaced, with close to a fifth of Europe’s current drivers expected to retire by 2030.

The instinct is to treat this as a pay problem. The evidence says otherwise. The IRU’s own driver barometer shows job satisfaction above 80% and wages comfortably above the average cost of living. Pay is not what keeps people out. The barriers are practical: training and licensing can cost several thousand euros, and once qualified, drivers face a real shortage of secure, decent places to rest.

There is a second money problem, and it is not about how much people earn but how long they wait for it. Much of the capacity we already have sits with small operators and owner-drivers on thin margins, many still waiting months to be paid for work already done. Ask them to take on more, collaborate more or invest in cleaner vehicles, and that wait is often what stops them. The technology to settle in minutes rather than weeks already exists. Making that the norm across the industry is part of modernising it.

Does modernising transport start with people?

Faced with this, it’s tempting to look past people altogether and hope that automation fills the gap. It will, but only in part, and not soon. What we will realistically see first is driverless trucks running point-to-point along the motorway, between distribution centres, in the countries moving fastest on the legislation. That is a controllable environment, and the economics are attractive, because an autonomous truck is not bound by driving time limits.

But the first mile and last mile, the complicated, human, urban part of the job, will take far longer to arrive. Driverless freight that crosses a different regulatory regime at every border is measured in decades, not years.

So the green and automated transition is not about replacing people; it is about changing what they do. Cutting the carbon out of freight is not only a question of better batteries. A great deal of the gain comes from running fewer empty miles: matching loads to the carriers best placed to carry them, so trucks travel full rather than half empty. Technology makes that possible, and the data shows where trucks are running empty, but it takes people to fill them.

Closing that gap is not about buying more trucks; it is about businesses collaborating to use what already exists, one operator’s spare capacity meeting another’s demand, so we do far more with the fleets we have.

The importance of transport skills

This is where it becomes a skills story. Automation and artificial intelligence are far more likely to reshape jobs than to remove them, and in most cases to demand more of the people doing them. The driver becomes the operator, the planner becomes an analyst, and the depot worker operates alongside automated systems rather than being replaced by them. None of that happens on its own. It takes deliberate reskilling and investment in the people already in the industry, not only the recruits still to come.

The task itself is clear. Retrain the existing workforce as the technology around them changes. Widen the digital skills base so operators can use the tools that make freight cleaner and more efficient. And clear the barriers that keep young people out of a profession that pays well and satisfies those who join it.

The transition in transport will not be won or lost on technology alone. It will be decided by whether the whole industry moves together. Cleaner trucks and smarter systems will help, but people have always delivered the best of this industry. That is where modernising transport has to start.