LSN and Fueler Consulting have published analysis of nearly three-quarters of a million HGV driver shifts, exposing the two-year licence restriction as an unsubstantiated barrier — and calling for live vacancy data, insurance transparency and a sector-wide rethink on risk.
For years, the HGV market has accepted one of its biggest recruitment barriers almost on trust.
Newly qualified drivers are routinely treated as higher risk because they have held their licence for less than two years. That assumption shapes who gets hired, who gets refused, who gets insured and who is left holding a licence they cannot turn into a career.
But where is the evidence? That was the question LSN and Fueler Consulting put to the market.
A major insurer confirmed the data behind its position was “confidential and commercially sensitive”. The FCA also confirmed in writing that it has undertaken no work around restrictions on fleet cover access for newly qualified HGV drivers, and has no planned work in this area.
So the evidence was asked for. It was not provided. That matters because new data produced by LSN/Fueler Consulting in partnership with ADR Network challenges the conventional thinking.
Together, they analysed 729,209 real world HGV driver shifts across two years. This was data from one of the UK’s largest specialist HGV driving agencies, taken from actual working shifts across multiple clients and live operating environments.
The findings should make the market stop and think. Drivers over 25 with less than two years’ experience had an incident rate of just 0.02%. That was the lowest rate in the supplied table. Drivers under 25 with less than two years’ experience had a higher incident rate, at 0.32%. Drivers over 50 with more than two years’ experience showed an incident rate of 0.37%.
That does not mean older drivers are unsafe. It does not mean all new drivers are safe. It means the two year rule is too blunt. Risk is not licence age alone. It is driver profile, selection, training, induction, health, shift pattern, job conditions, support and management. Yet the market still leans on a convention that nobody has properly evidenced in public.
This is the headline. But it sits inside a much bigger failure.
The UK HGV sector is trying to manage one of the country’s most important labour markets with slow, patchy and incomplete data. The latest DfT figures showed 31% vacancy rates, 23% missed deliveries and driver pay 18% below the all employee median. But those numbers were already five months old when published. In 2021, this market moved in weeks.
We do not have live vacancy data. We do not know how many newly qualified drivers enter paid work after passing. We do not properly track why deliveries are missed. We do not have a national driver health baseline. We do not measure driver intent to stay. We do not capture enough near miss and close call data before serious incidents happen.
So when the next shortage builds, we will not see it clearly until it is already hurting operators, customers and the wider economy. That is not good enough.
The answers are not complicated.
Build a live vacancy tracker. Link test pass data to employment outcomes. Create a national platform for newer drivers. Properly explain missed deliveries. Measure driver health and wellbeing. Capture near misses before they become collisions. And above all, force a proper review of the two year insurance convention.
The sector cannot keep asking new entrants, employers and agencies to absorb the cost of a barrier that has not been transparently proven. This is now a choice. Better data. Insurance transparency. Real accountability.
Doing nothing, when the warning signs are already visible, is unforgivable.
David Coombes, chair, Logistics Skills Network
Marc Fels, founder, Fueler Consulting
