IN Brief:
- IRU says around 2.9 million truck driver positions remain unfilled across 18 markets.
- Europe has one of the highest shortage rates, at 13%, equal to roughly 502,000 unfilled truck driver roles.
- The shortage is being intensified by recruitment difficulty, workforce expectations, and the appeal of long-haul driving to younger workers.
IRU has warned that the global shortage of professional truck drivers is becoming harder to address, with around 2.9 million positions still unfilled across 18 markets.
The figure represents about 11% of the truck driver workforce in the markets covered by the organisation’s 2025 driver shortage survey. Europe remains one of the most exposed regions, with a shortage rate of 13%, equivalent to about 502,000 unfilled truck driver positions.
The shortage is a capacity constraint on road freight, manufacturing supply, retail distribution, port evacuation, construction logistics, and cross-border trade. When driver availability tightens, transport planners have fewer options, higher rates, less route flexibility, and weaker resilience during disruption.
IRU says recruitment challenges are deepening, with changing workforce expectations making long-haul driving less attractive to younger generations. The problem is structural. Older drivers are leaving the sector faster than younger drivers are entering it, while long-distance road transport often conflicts with expectations around work-life balance, facilities, safety, and predictable schedules.
Different markets feel the shortage in different ways. In some regions, long-haul international work is hardest to staff. In others, local distribution, tanker operations, temperature-controlled transport, or specialist haulage face acute pressure. Across all segments, freight demand cannot become transport capacity without trained, licensed, available drivers.
Training and security are now part of the same workforce question. TAPA’s €1.3m driver training push, covered at TAPA’s €1.3m driver training push targets cargo crime at road level, reflects the need for drivers who are not only available but properly supported in a more exposed freight environment.
The shortage is likely to reinforce interest in automation, route optimisation, collaborative transport networks, and modal shift. Better planning can reduce empty miles. Shared networks can improve asset utilisation. Intermodal rail can remove some long-haul road burden. Yard automation and scheduling systems can reduce wasted driver time at depots. None replaces the driver workforce, but each can reduce the labour lost through poor network design.
Utilisation is becoming the immediate pressure point. A driver delayed at a warehouse gate, port terminal, border crossing, or customer site is not simply waiting; capacity is being consumed without movement. In a tight labour market, detention time, poor loading discipline, late paperwork, and weak appointment systems become more expensive.
Pay remains part of the answer, although it cannot carry the solution alone. Drivers also judge the profession through rest facilities, parking security, route predictability, respect at delivery sites, equipment quality, training access, and the ability to spend time away from the cab. A sector that wants younger entrants has to compete with careers offering more predictable routines and lower personal disruption.
The gender gap further reduces the available recruitment pool. Road freight remains heavily male-dominated in many markets, and broadening participation requires better facilities, safety standards, flexible working options, and training pathways. Those changes need coordinated action across carriers, shippers, governments, training providers, and infrastructure owners.
Transport procurement is also changing. Buying freight solely on the lowest rate becomes riskier when the market is short of people able to perform the work. Reliable carriers with stable driver bases, better training, modern equipment, and stronger operating discipline may carry a higher price, but they also reduce service failure exposure.
Visibility can help companies use limited capacity more intelligently. If a shipment is delayed, the cause may be traffic, customs, port congestion, driver hours, a missed collection, or a capacity shortfall. Better data does not create drivers, but it reduces the amount of capacity lost to avoidable uncertainty.
IRU’s figures show that the driver shortage has moved beyond a temporary recruitment cycle. Driver time, training, and working conditions are now part of supply chain design, not peripheral employment issues that can be solved after capacity has already tightened.
