In Mexico there is a fleet of almost 600,000 trucks -or cargo motor units, according to the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation-, and Canacar estimates that close to 10% is parked due to the lack of operators.
50 or 40 years ago, families with one or more trucks were common. These were operated by the fathers, who were in charge of transporting merchandise from one point of the country to another. The children grew up and wanted to imitate the footsteps of the father. They also wanted to be operators of a large vehicle.
“Today the situation is very different, it is no longer the same”, Medrano maintains. Insecurity on roads, which is on the rise, It is a detractor for the new generations to want to be drivershe says in an interview with Expansionwithin the framework of the Canacar 2022 Convention.
According to figures from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, the criminal incidence while performing this activity totaled 7,416 mishaps from January to July of this year, which meant an increase of 2.2% compared to the same period last year.
In addition to insecurity, the sector faces a global big problem: Young people do not consider truck driving as a career. The average age of drivers is 44, according to data from the Ministry of the Economy, and the current shortage will only get worse as these drivers retire, unless the industry can encourage millennials to get behind the wheel of the big trucks.
Canacar created 23 operator creation centers, known as “seedbeds”, in addition to promoting the implementation of the Professional Technician career in Freight Transport Operator, in Tampico, Tamaulipas, with the expectation that about 90 students will graduate. per generation.
“We want to work together with society and with the government to make the operator profession really attractive and make it really profitable, because we are facing many challenges”, he highlights.