Supermarket shortages

[PH4555]

skwdenyer said:

Milk was a potential problem flagged a little while ago.

Grocer said:

Earlier this month the boss of the UK’s biggest dairy supplier has said supermarkets could face a “summer of disruption” to milk deliveries if the Government does not act to address a shortage of lorry drivers.

Arla, which supplies milk to about 2,400 stores each day in the UK,said the company has struggled to deliver to 10 per cent of stores on a more regular basis in recent weeks.

https://www.lancs.live/news/uk-world-news/sainsbur...

Arla not the only ones with problems: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/dairy/milk-processors-...

Speaking as someone in the industry, it's a st job that no-one wants to do, especially not now that the big logistics companies are paying upwards of £20/hr to do easy RDC trunking with a box trailer or curtain-sider where there is virtually no physical effort involved. Arla (and their outsourced logisitics arm Moran Logistics) offer around 60% of that and you're dragging around a 45ft trailer through urban streets, trying to reverse onto tight loading docks which are blocked by staff and customer cars "I'll only be 5 minutes" and then you've got a load of graft man-handling full cages of milk around and then reload all the empty cages from the previous delivery and find somewhere to put them without blocking in your other 9 deliveries still to do.

Who is going to bust a gut doing that crap when you can do a nice easy RDC trunk run with a full load of crisps or a box trailer of parcels from your local depot to the hub where you don't even touch the load, all for more money than you'd get doing multi-drop store deliveries?

Realistically, Arla/Morans need to be offering £25/hr to stand any chance of getting enough bums on seats and there simply isn't the margin in milk to pay that and still turn a profit so they do they only thing they can do and go crying to the RHA and government demanding subsidies.

The reason the food containers aren't moving off the docks is because once again the driver wages for container haulage are at the low end of the pay scale due to the shipping lines paying st money to the hauliers. Subbies are in high demand right now and can pretty much name their price at the supermarkets and big logistics cos as everyone is desperate to get their stuff moved. The shipping lines can't/won't compete and no haulier wants to have his trucks tied up on the docks for hours on end because of the latest toys-out-of-pram paddy the crane operators are having today and so nothing moves.

There's no shortage of qualified CE licence holders. What there is a shortage of is companies that are prepared to pay the market rates to get their stuff moved. Drivers will naturally migrate to the best paying jobs for the least amount of effort, and that's exactly what's happening

[anonymous-user]

Red9zero said:

That is the benefit of not living in the city. We have milk delivered from a local dairy, we buy our veg from local farm shops and have meat delivered by a local butcher. Even the supermarket deliveries we have had seem to be as normal.

I’d have thought cities would be the last places to have shortages, if you have only one lorry with 1000 milk jugs (for example) you’d take it to the place you’re most likely to sell them all with the least effort, so probably the places with the most people? I’m not a logistics expert though!

[V8covin]

As usual it's Sainsbury's with the empty shelves ,largely because it's a badly run company.
There's no shortages at any of the shops I go to.
If it's not beneath you try Lidl or Farmfoods,the latter has stocks coming out of it's ears

[alangla]

PH4555 said:

Subbies are in high demand right now and can pretty much name their price at the supermarkets and big logistics cos as everyone is desperate to get their stuff moved.

Driving up the M74 on Sunday, I passed a couple of Morrisons wagons, one had a Wincanton tractor on the front & the other was some haulier I've never heard of, presumably an indy - I don't think I've ever seen any of their wagons with anything other than either their own or Gist's units on the front.

Tesco/Asda/Lidl I've seen with independent units on the front, especially Tesco for the Isle of Lewis or Asda with McBurnie, presumably heading for the ferry to NI, but never Morrisons.

Are there a lot of subbies dragging supermarket trailers round just now?

[juice]

Where the flippy dip is all the tonic ???

[Teddy Lop]

juice said:

Where the flippy dip is all the tonic ???

Loads in my locals, but no sugar free ginger ale, and it took me 3 attempts to find non sugar free

What is the world coming to.

[PH4555]

alangla said:

Driving up the M74 on Sunday, I passed a couple of Morrisons wagons, one had a Wincanton tractor on the front & the other was some haulier I've never heard of, presumably an indy - I don't think I've ever seen any of their wagons with anything other than either their own or Gist's units on the front.

Tesco/Asda/Lidl I've seen with independent units on the front, especially Tesco for the Isle of Lewis or Asda with McBurnie, presumably heading for the ferry to NI, but never Morrisons.

Are there a lot of subbies dragging supermarket trailers round just now?

Wincanton run the transport at some of the RDCs. There's loads of subbies pulling for Morrisons.

[CambsBill]

untakenname said:

It's now been over a month since I've been able to get frozen green beans in any supermarket.

Fresh green beans probably available on your local market stall though, and will tase much better than frozen.

[clockworks]

Weekly shop in Sainsbury's today. The only real shortages/gaps were in the fizzy drink aisle. Better than it was last week.

The shop and car park were rammed though - loads of holidaymakers with nothing better to do on a drizzly day.

[soad]

PH4555 said:

Stuff

Good post, chap.

Those (full) milk tets are a nightmare to handle - loads are damaged (stuck wheels) or insecure (easily opened) doors with broken latches, which are only partially closed.

Still, many a Latvian/Polish/Romanian (and British!) drivers seem to enjoy the job.

[nonsequitur]

juice said:

Where the flippy dip is all the tonic ???

Mixed with the gin with ice and lemon, I hope.

[PH4555]

soad said:

Good post, chap.

Those (full) milk tets are a nightmare to handle - loads are damaged (stuck wheels) or insecure (easily opened) doors with broken latches, which are only partially closed.

Still, many a Latvian/Polish/Romanian (and British!) drivers seem to enjoy the job.

Arla/Moran/Muller have struggled to get drivers to do it even in the 'good' times when the wages were more of a level playing field across the various sectors and there was an endless supply of cheap eastern european labour. Most of them have returned to their homeland as the local pay has risen substantially and neighbouring countries like Germany have become more attractive to work in than here.

But store delivery work has always been undesirable, particularly in cities and town centres because of traffic, tight access, staff/customer cars blocking loading areas, traffic wardens waiting to pounce the second you stop, camera'd yellow box junctions, time restricted access for precincts and then all the hassle with narrow tail lifts and overloaded pallets and cages of stuff to man-handle.

Why put yourself through that when you can earn more money on a leisurely 2.5hr drive taking 26 pallets from Wakefield to Tesco Daventry RDC, sleeping for 3 hours while they unload you, then a leisurely 2.5 hr drive back to Wakefield and home where the most effort you'll do is open and close the trailer doors? Drivers are rapidlly waking up to this and there is a mass exodus happening from companies doing 'undesirable' work (or just low-paying haulage companies in general) onto clean, easy good-paying work.

[Mr Whippy]

PH4555 said:

Why put yourself through that when you can earn more money on a leisurely 2.5hr drive taking 26 pallets from Wakefield to Tesco Daventry RDC, sleeping for 3 hours while they unload you, then a leisurely 2.5 hr drive back to Wakefield and home where the most effort you'll do is open and close the trailer doors? Drivers are rapidlly waking up to this and there is a mass exodus happening from companies doing 'undesirable' work (or just low-paying haulage companies in general) onto clean, easy good-paying work.

Why did they ever do that work?

And who did the easy work before, who now isn’t, leaving a space for the people doing the horrible work to move into?

Is this all powered by drivers leaving the UK, so picking and choosing is now an option, and everyone is going for the good work?

Now the ‘good’ work is in demand, the employers can pay less. Which makes the less in demand work less undesirable.

I think this is all just more rebalancing and ultimately transitory.

Though, given the numbers I’ve heard, truck drivers do seem to have been paid crap for some runs.
Was it like this 15 years ago? Have these low wages in recent times been driven by cheap foreign labour?
Now a return to more sensible and sustainable levels?

[Sway]

Mr Whippy said:

PH4555 said:

Why put yourself through that when you can earn more money on a leisurely 2.5hr drive taking 26 pallets from Wakefield to Tesco Daventry RDC, sleeping for 3 hours while they unload you, then a leisurely 2.5 hr drive back to Wakefield and home where the most effort you'll do is open and close the trailer doors? Drivers are rapidlly waking up to this and there is a mass exodus happening from companies doing 'undesirable' work (or just low-paying haulage companies in general) onto clean, easy good-paying work.

Why did they ever do that work?

And who did the easy work before, who now isn’t, leaving a space for the people doing the horrible work to move into?

Is this all powered by drivers leaving the UK, so picking and choosing is now an option, and everyone is going for the good work?

Now the ‘good’ work is in demand, the employers can pay less. Which makes the less in demand work less undesirable.

I think this is all just more rebalancing and ultimately transitory.

Though, given the numbers I’ve heard, truck drivers do seem to have been paid crap for some runs.
Was it like this 15 years ago? Have these low wages in recent times been driven by cheap foreign labour?
Now a return to more sensible and sustainable levels?

The different types of haulage used to pay broadly the same. Drivers may have wanted the cushty RDC shuttle runs, but they weren't available, so took what was.

However, now there's a shortage - loads have retired, loads haven't been licenced, loads have returned back to mainland Europe.

So, in the shortage, it's an employees market. They're prioritising the 'good' work/jobs, which means they're getting filled - but there's insufficient supply for the 'remainder' to fulfill the crappy work.

The wages have been flat (declining real terms) for decades it seems. I recall my uncle (licenced in just about anything) gradually going from having loads of spare cash, and running highly modified Mopar muscle cars and trucks gradually having to sell them off and ending up struggling to run a knackered old Focus - whilst doing 'more challenging' jobs than he'd been doing previously, with more hours, more physicality (and indeed, more time not working due to being signed off for injury as it's fking awful at times).

[skwdenyer]

Mr Whippy said:

PH4555 said:

Why put yourself through that when you can earn more money on a leisurely 2.5hr drive taking 26 pallets from Wakefield to Tesco Daventry RDC, sleeping for 3 hours while they unload you, then a leisurely 2.5 hr drive back to Wakefield and home where the most effort you'll do is open and close the trailer doors? Drivers are rapidlly waking up to this and there is a mass exodus happening from companies doing 'undesirable' work (or just low-paying haulage companies in general) onto clean, easy good-paying work.

Why did they ever do that work?

And who did the easy work before, who now isn’t, leaving a space for the people doing the horrible work to move into?

Is this all powered by drivers leaving the UK, so picking and choosing is now an option, and everyone is going for the good work?

Now the ‘good’ work is in demand, the employers can pay less. Which makes the less in demand work less undesirable.

I think this is all just more rebalancing and ultimately transitory.

Though, given the numbers I’ve heard, truck drivers do seem to have been paid crap for some runs.
Was it like this 15 years ago? Have these low wages in recent times been driven by cheap foreign labour?
Now a return to more sensible and sustainable levels?

How much are people prepared to pay for stuff? That's the key driver here. Prices aren't elastic. If consumer demand isn't there at higher price points, there will be no money for increased haulier wages. With Diesel being 30% more expensive than last year, that squeeze is already there.

As a society, we've become used to very cheap food, and indeed cheap "stuff" in general. It isn't obvious that the market will just re-balance wages upwards.

[PH4555]

Mr Whippy said:

PH4555 said:

Why put yourself through that when you can earn more money on a leisurely 2.5hr drive taking 26 pallets from Wakefield to Tesco Daventry RDC, sleeping for 3 hours while they unload you, then a leisurely 2.5 hr drive back to Wakefield and home where the most effort you'll do is open and close the trailer doors? Drivers are rapidlly waking up to this and there is a mass exodus happening from companies doing 'undesirable' work (or just low-paying haulage companies in general) onto clean, easy good-paying work.

Why did they ever do that work?

And who did the easy work before, who now isn’t, leaving a space for the people doing the horrible work to move into?

Is this all powered by drivers leaving the UK, so picking and choosing is now an option, and everyone is going for the good work?

Now the ‘good’ work is in demand, the employers can pay less. Which makes the less in demand work less undesirable.

I think this is all just more rebalancing and ultimately transitory.

Though, given the numbers I’ve heard, truck drivers do seem to have been paid crap for some runs.
Was it like this 15 years ago? Have these low wages in recent times been driven by cheap foreign labour?
Now a return to more sensible and sustainable levels?

Places like Tesco and Arla used to have good, reliable permie drivers of their own, on good packages which made the extra graft worth it as the money was right. Then came along "logistics.com", namely the Eddie Stobarts, Morans who promised Tesco and Arla that they could do the transport more efficiently and cheaper. Tesco and Arla collectively rubbed their hands together at this awesomeness and in comes Stobart and Moran with their inexperienced minimum wage eastern european imports and newly passed drivers and predictaby everything went to st and it's been like that for well over a decade. They've bumbled along using a combination of subbies and a revolving door of EE agency drivers.

Most of the EE drivers have gone home who were holding down the rates and the gap hasn't been filled by our own as they left the industry and either retired or retrained when the EEs flooded the market and aren't prepared to return for the rates on offer when they have to spend the best part of £400 to renewal their tacho and DCPC ticket. So as everyone and their cousin needs stuff moving around the country yesterday, supply and demand market forces have pushed the rates up and those with the deepest pockets (hauliers and customers) are the ones who are getting stuff moved while bottom-feeders like Moran and Stobart can't pay the market rates and still turn a profit because they were all in a race to the bottom with each other to win contracts, so they go crying to the government wanting subsidies due to their own mismanagement, believing that they'd always have a pool of cheap EE labour at their disposal.

The rates still haven't risen much for full-time permie roles which is why few of the ex-drivers are interested in returning. The rate rises are mostly through the agencies and subbies. Aldi RDC at Doncaster are paying £30/hr through agency to get drivers to do store deliveries as they can't accept any more inbound deliveries due to the warehouse being full! This is increasingly happening elsewhere - warehouses full of stuff needing to be delivered but no-one willing to transport it for the rates they want to pay, so we end up in this deadlock situation waiting to see who blinks first.

I agree with you that it will likely balance out in time, but for the foreseeable future there doesn't look like there's going to be a let up in demand; I actually think it's going to get quite a bit worse yet. You also have to remember that the EEs accounted for a high percentage of the warehousing workforce too, so the delays in getting stuff moved and delivered to customers are further compounded here due to much reduced staff numbers, ie. no-one to pick orders, load/unload trucks.

In short, the HGV drivers can cherry-pick what work they fancy doing, what hours, what days and get a very respectable pay packet at the end of the week for the amount of effort they had to put in. No-one is going to be doing Arla or Tesco store delivery work by choice, unless they are masochists!

[PH4555]

skwdenyer said:

How much are people prepared to pay for stuff? That's the key driver here. Prices aren't elastic. If consumer demand isn't there at higher price points, there will be no money for increased haulier wages. With Diesel being 30% more expensive than last year, that squeeze is already there.

As a society, we've become used to very cheap food, and indeed cheap "stuff" in general. It isn't obvious that the market will just re-balance wages upwards.

I think we are on borrowed time with current prices and they are really going to explode next year, especially food prices. The alleged driver shortage is only a small cog in the machine. Global supply chains have been in disarray since the covaids started and have only become worse as time has progressed. Now with all the talk about decimated crops in the Americas and Asia, this will filter through the supply chains over the coming months and I think not being able to pick up a 4-pinter of milk in Sainsburys will be the least of your worries come next year.

[Biggy Stardust]

MrMan001 said:

I’d have thought cities would be the last places to have shortages, if you have only one lorry with 1000 milk jugs (for example) you’d take it to the place you’re most likely to sell them all with the least effort, so probably the places with the most people? I’m not a logistics expert though!

Ever driven in London traffic? I'd suspect it would be even more unpleasant in a big HGV.

[Turn7]

Ikea OOS of the Billy bookcase in all localish stores....

This item is something they brag about selling every 5 minutes on the website.....

[anonymous-user]

PH4555 said:

while bottom-feeders like Moran and Stobart can't pay the market rates and still turn a profit because they were all in a race to the bottom with each other to win contracts, so they go crying to the government wanting subsidises

They just have to trim their lifestyles then. I'm sure Mr Stobart can lose the helicopter and polo pitch/team and country estate and still pay the drivers from the money he made off the ball of them? Rather than being subsidised.