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There are professions where generational change has become a real problem. This is the case of the transportation sector, mainly due to its harsh working conditions. The requirement to spend long days on the road and sleeping away from home makes it extremely difficult to reconcile family and personal life, which, added to salaries that sometimes do not compensate for the physical sacrifice and level of responsibility, make the profession unattractive for young people.
Juan Antonio Trujillo, a truck driver with decades on the road and more than 30 years as a freelancer, spoke about this in the ‘Rutas de Éxito’ podcast, where he urged union unity through associative platforms to recover dignity and quality of life in the profession. And, yes or yes, the profession must be dignified to attract young people.
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Trujillo, at 60 years old, continues working. He currently drives a trailer with a tarp, operating in the Catalonia area, which allows him to return home to sleep every night. Approximately, he travels between 300 and 500 kilometers a day, and warns that, in this sector, there are no closed days. Nor are there any schedules, and one day you can get up at 4:00 a.m., another at 5:00 a.m., or another at 6:00 a.m., as the service demands. Something that not everyone understands.
“Not the youth anymore, people even my age, want to spend 8 hours and go home. So, go to a factory, do your 8 hours and that’s it. In a truck you can’t work 8 hours. In a truck, if you have to work 12, you work 12. If you have to work 14, you work 14,” he warns. Of course, that does not mean that we are paid what is fair: “You have to do the work, but it must also be remunerated. If I do a little more, then I should also see it in the salary. And that would give a lot of status and a lot of cachet to transportation and to the youth who want to start taking a truck.”
“I have the hope that this will be an attractive job again”
In another comparison, this time from a social perspective, Juan Antonio Trujillo warns that what seems impossible today, which is accessing a home at a young age, for him was perfectly achievable: “I became a chauffeur without asking for a loan and without anything. I married the mother of my son at the age of 30 without asking for a loan, with my house paid for.”
Now, although it was possible, it doesn’t mean that it was easy either: “Of course, I made two trips to Seville a week and I spent 4 years like that. They haven’t given it to me. But you want to do that now and you can’t. And don’t tell me ‘yes, of course, before the house was also worth less but of course you also earned less’. You had more purchasing power. Today earning by doing what I would do today, I couldn’t do it, because today everything has changed. Because today they don’t let you live,” he adds.
Regarding the sector itself, Trujillo greatly emphasizes that the business is not sustained only by “paying for diesel and making some profit.” He urges all self-employed workers to get their numbers right (including tire wear, insurance, and the fact that in August the truck may be stopped, but you still have to earn a salary).
He also harshly criticizes truckers who accept to load their trucks at prices well below the market just to cover expenses, driving down prices for the entire sector. His advice is clear: if a trip doesn’t work out, it is better to stay still. It also strongly encourages transporters to join the National Platform to be united.
In this sense, he argues that it is the only way to put pressure on the government and large logistics companies to work at fair and decent rates. “I have the hope that this job will be attractive again and people will be able to do what I did 40 years ago,” he says, defending that, despite the difficulties and slavery of schedules (especially on the international route), he is proud to be a truck driver, stating that they move the world.
“I don’t want to say that we are essential, but we are one of the most important links in the world. And even more so today when things move from one side to the other and we want everything for yesterday. We do a very great job, if we stop, the world stops,” he concludes.