Transport & logistics and hospitality recruiter right4staff has seen a 25% increase in the demand for temporary drivers across its UK network.

Melissa Carslake, managing director (South) at right4staff, believes these figures mean that industry is starting to make a comeback as the economy slowly improves.

“For the past 18 months the demand for drivers dropped to unprecedented lows but now we are experiencing a surge in demand,” says Carslake.

“During the recession, businesses had to shrink their in-house fleet to cut costs but as the market has improved there is now a significant shortage of drivers. At right4staff we are having to work hard to meet the demands of our clients, which is good news for LGV drivers as more and more jobs are becoming readily available.”

This increase in demand is backed up by figures from Skills for Logistics, a sector skills council for the UK’s freight logistics industries. It found that in May 2009 there was a total of 4,695 LGV driver vacancies but a year later in May 2010 this had risen to 13,299 vacancies — an increase of 183%.