Spain Faces Driver Shortage: Immigrants to Replace 15,000 Truckers

Spain seeks 15,000 truck drivers and licenses cost up to €6,000

Spain is short 15,000 truck drivers. The number is undisputed; the disagreement lies in why they are not appearing. The sector argues that Spaniards no longer want to hold the wheel; many who do say their hourly wage does not even cover the license or nights away from home. Overarching all, a forecast by veteran transporter Antonio Abad, stated without anesthesia: in ten years, he claims, all truck drivers in the country will be immigrants.

The starting diagnosis points to four bottlenecks: working conditions, a disparity of agreements that breaks any comparison, the cost of the license, and the mandatory practical course. With thousands of vacancies to fill, the sector has become accustomed to hiring abroad what it does not find within.

How much does it cost to get a truck license?

The CAP, the certificate of professional competence, is around €1,200. A complete package of C license, CAP, ADR, and tankers amounts to about €1,300 plus exam fees, with eight trailer classes apart and class hours at €80. These are the figures handled by those who have just gone through the process, and they do not include failures.

The account changes greatly depending on everyone's luck. There are those who got it almost for free in subsidized courses and those who have paid close to €6,000 for a nephew's license who failed once. That differential, on the order of €1,300 to €6,000 for the same paper, acts as the first entry filter into the trade and explains why driving schools are spoken of more as a price barrier than as academies.

To this is added the administrative route. It is argued that the DGT puts more obstacles on Spaniards than on drivers who arrive with a license already homologated from another country, and among professionals themselves, some claim to have coincided with colleagues incorporated with all licenses validated, including the bus license, without having driven almost any car in their life.

How much does a truck driver earn and how many hours do they work?

The hourly wage attributed to the sector is €5 or €6, with shifts that in the hardest accounts reach 12 and 15 daily hours, minimum rest, no overtime, and no work calendar. From this comes a phrase that summarizes the discontent: the problem is not the license, but what is paid afterwards.

The version given by other drivers is different. On national routes, most days they do not drive more than six hours; on international routes, they can do ten hours two days a week and nine the rest, and they rarely reach the limit because they must ensure parking before time runs out. The tachograph, they remember, can no longer be manipulated and there are controls everywhere.

As for the payroll, the bus moves between €1,900 and €2,100 because it does not generate per diems for overnight stays, compared to the truck, which does add them. Some boast of 34 vacation days and having paid for a €70,000 house in three years. Others see in the same trade a life in the cabin, described without affection as a rolling storage unit.

The salary or the border: the two theories on vacancies

Some argue that if labor willing to work for less were not brought in, companies would be forced to improve conditions. The response from the other side is that there are no candidates: if Spaniards willing to get on a truck do not appear, vacancies are filled as best as possible.

The aging of the group crosses the migratory issue with demographics. One current of analysis speaks of substitution of national workers by others with less negotiating power; the counter replies that there is no majority rejecting the trade for comfort, but fewer people of working age and more manual and demanding positions unfilled. What both readings share is the effect on the price of labor: the arrival of professionals willing to accept lower rates pushes down a salary that already moves in modest ranges.

They also coincide in the picture of the past. In the nineties, a own truck lived well and took up to a third of the freight price; that image disappeared with the price war between companies that began to hire drivers from other countries to lower costs.

Electric trucks and scholarships: the future already being tested

The replacement does not have to come in the form of a person. There are manufacturers testing electric trucks in southern Spain to check if they withstand the heat, and scholarship programs like the one MAN Truck & Bus Iberia launches for the third edition so that women get their truck license and access the labor market. There are also bus drivers missing, so the bottleneck is not exclusive to the truck.

Autonomous driving appears in all predictive polls, although with nuances. Replacing the driver involves an investment estimated at hundreds of thousands of euros per unit to save a modest monthly payroll, and it does not solve the rest of the chain: someone has to open the doors, adjust the trailer to the dock, place the straps, put the lock, and balance the refrigerator temperature.

With these threads, it is reasonable to expect more electric trucks, more scholarships, and more hiring at origin rather than a generalized salary increase. But the forecast is not closed: the first company to raise the offer will take the drivers from the competition, and that mechanism is already being seen. The question is how long it takes for the rest to copy it.