What Most Guides Don’t Tell You About Hiring Temporary HGV Drivers
Most guides on hiring temporary HGV drivers focus on the basics. Licence types. Availability. Compliance checks. Inductions. All important, but largely expected.
What they rarely address is the reality logistics managers deal with every day: constrained supply, operational pressure, fatigue risk and the consequences of getting it wrong when demand spikes.
Temporary driver supply doesn’t fail because managers don’t understand the process. It fails because the system around it isn’t designed for stress.
One uncomfortable truth is that availability is never unlimited. Especially for experienced Class 1 drivers, night work, trunking and time-critical operations. Guides often imply that with the right agency, drivers will simply appear. In practice, availability is finite and competitive, and early planning matters far more than last-minute effort.
Another truth most guides avoid is that over-promising causes more damage than shortfall. When agencies say yes to everything, the risk doesn’t disappear, it shifts. It lands with the operator at 2am when a driver doesn’t turn up, compliance becomes rushed, or overtime quietly creeps past safe limits.
Temporary drivers are often framed as a flexibility win, but flexibility without structure creates fragility. Without clear escalation processes, realistic cut-off times and honest conversations about what is and isn’t achievable, temporary supply becomes reactive. That’s when fatigue, missed inductions and poor site fit start to show.
There’s also a tendency to treat all temporary drivers as interchangeable. In reality, the difference between a driver who knows the site, the routes and the expectations, and one who doesn’t, is the difference between a smooth shift and a near miss. Consistency matters far more than most guides acknowledge.
Most guides talk about compliance as a checklist. Experienced transport managers know it’s a living system. Licence checks, CPC validity and right-to-work are only part of the picture. Real compliance is about confidence under pressure, decision-making when things change and not forcing shortcuts when the operation is stretched.
Perhaps the biggest thing guides don’t say is that temporary driver supply reflects the health of the wider operation. Businesses that rely heavily on last-minute cover, excessive overtime or constant agency rotation usually have deeper planning or retention challenges. Temporary drivers don’t cause instability, they expose it.
The operations that use temporary drivers well are not the ones making emergency calls every morning. They are the ones treating temporary supply as part of workforce design. They plan earlier, share better information, accept constraints and build stable agency relationships based on honesty rather than optimism.
Temporary drivers are not just there to fill gaps. Used properly, they protect permanent teams, reduce fatigue, support compliance and provide breathing space during peak demand.
When demand rises, what matters isn’t whether you can find a driver. It’s whether you still have control.
