As the transport industry continues to grapple with a shortage of truck drivers, one Northern Territory business has started offering big salaries to attract the right operators.
The road transport industry is suffering a shortage of drivers across the country, with around 2,000 driver vacancies in Queensland alone.
After having trouble finding quality applicants for a road train driver position, Jason Pepper said his livestock trucking business had been offering an annual salary of up to $150,000 for the right candidate.
The average salary of a road train driver is between $105,000 to $125,000, according to employment website Seek.
A job ad on the Pepper Transport page with the above-award wage was viewed more than 200,000 times.
"We put it up to find some good people — social media seems to be a good way of getting the word out there. It did go a bit viral," Mr Pepper said.
"There are some good people out there that have called us…and they are looking to give this type of work a try.
"We've got a good team at the moment. I'd like to think the money has attracted some good operators."
Brad Bloomfield, who runs his own trucking business from Alice Springs, transporting freight across the NT and South Australia, said good drivers "are really hard to come by".
"It's not so important to be a really good driver, but a bad driver can cost you [a lot of money], just because they can't be bothered doing something properly," he said.
"If they make a mistake, if they don't do a good job and give you a bad day, a bad driver can cost you $10,000 or $20,000 in a single day.
"A really good driver is definitely worth it, if you can find them and keep them."
Driver shortage an 'ever-increasing problem'
A shortage of drivers has been "an ever-increasing problem for some years", according to Queensland Trucking Association chief executive Gary Mahon.
"It doesn't matter which state you're in, what industry you're working in, the shortages are right across the board," he said.
"The age of truck drivers is also an issue — about 54 is the average age now and increasing as each year goes by, so we've got a percentage of the workforce that is retiring because of the age they're coming to.
"We've got red-hot competition with other industries, service industries, tourism and the mines, and we have pretty much full employment.
"So you roll all those issues together and you have the crisis that we have."
Queensland has recently introduced a heavy-vehicle driving apprenticeship as part of an industry effort to get younger people into the profession.
Road train driving a lifestyle
Carting livestock in the NT can involve driving very long distances and visiting remote locations, crossing crocodile-inhabited rivers and camping out.
Mr Pepper said the best drivers were those who were in the industry for the lifestyle, not the wage.
"The people that we're looking for are the ones that love this lifestyle — it's not a job for them, it's a lifestyle," he said.
Conditions for drivers had improved significantly in the past few decades, Mr Pepper said.
"A lot of people think we don't sleep, we don't eat, we don't shower, but that's not the case at all," he said.
"It's good now that we can pay people well and they can have a bit more of a casual approach to the job, not quite so full-on like it was back in the day.
"With the technology we have now it's a much more comfortable job that what it was in days gone by."
