New Zealand’s road transport industry is making good progress to encourage more people to join by undertaking professional qualifications. In 2021, we launched Te ara ki tua Road to success, an initiative created by three organisations: Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand, National Road Carriers, and the NZ Trucking Association.

Late last year, Road to success set itself “the big hairy audacious goal” of 1000 enrolments in tertiary qualifications by the end of 2023.

Work over the last couple of years, has seen the Road to success tertiary qualifications pathway gain more momentum than ever. That increasing traction is largely down to buy-in by road transport companies – thanks go to the likes of Carr and Haslam, KAM Transport, NZ Express, Mackleys, Road Transport Logistics, TranzLiquid, and many other operators. The leadership they have shown, particularly in innovating and changing their approach, make it easier to nurture new to industry drivers or give their current driver an opportunity to gain a fit-for-purpose industry qualification.

The sooner we get this tertiary qualification pathway commonly recognised as the go-to path that truck drivers take as a matter of course – which is not too dissimilar to the approach taken in other sectors with apprenticeships – the more our sector will benefit in the long run.

This is a long game and over the next few months we will be focussing even more on leveraging off the large amount of good work already being undertaken by numerous operators/members across all our organisations, particularly those that have been doing their own recruiting, training, and staff development.

Road to success offers two options: The traineeship provides the pathway for new to industry drivers, as well as supporting those operators who are already training and developing new drivers, giving them the qualification framework to complement the training in-cab already being given. The Boost programme provides an opportunity for more established drivers to gain a tertiary qualification and promotes continuous learning.

Our ongoing discussions with Waka Kotahi on how the value of operators with industry qualified drivers can be more appropriately recognised are also looking more and more positive.

For any operators seeking new entrants we have some 20 candidates ready and waiting to be introduced to operators as well as others in our pipeline yet to be screened.

You can find the Te ara ki tua Road to success tertiary qualifications pathway here.

By Fiona McDonagh, membership manager Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand,