Why it pays to keep on trucking for a career

Logistics is a £55bn-a-year industry in the UK, yet most do not even consider it, says Nick Jackson

A favourite snippet of wisdom from profoundly unwise celebrities is that success is a journey, not a destination. For some that means a well-paid job that leaves you free to think, for others rapid promotion up the corporate ladder. Either way, logistics is one career destination you should check out.

Logistics is, of course, all about matching journey and destination. One of Sun Tzu's five fundamentals of victory, it is worth £55bn a year in the UK, employing 1.7 million. Yet somehow it slips below the radar of most people starting out on their careers. This has led to a massive shortfall in recruitment. "Because it's a fairly invisible business there are key shortages of lorry drivers and there's a real hunger for graduates and other management trainees," says Ian Hetherington, chief executive of Skills for Logistics, the sector skills council for the industry. "There are huge shortages of middle management." This means promotion is often rapid. Within two years of leaving university Hetherington was running an oil depot.

For those with no interest in a fast lane to management trucking has a lot to offer too, with a massive shortage of lorry drivers nationwide. Driving is perfect if you want time to think, become fluent in Pushtu, or learn all Bob Dylan's songs. Training to become a lorry driver takes two weeks. At around £1,000 a week, training is expensive, but qualified drivers can expect salaries around the £26,000-a-year mark, as good as many graduate starting salaries in the City (with half the hours) and roughly double those in journalism.

Many in the industry think potential drivers are put off by the image of truckers as the kind of antediluvian thug who makes bit-part appearances in made-for-TV movies. "Everyone's got over that chauvinistic side of things, we're ready to move with the times," says Susan Chappelhow, 24, who drives articulated lorries for Cumbrian transport company Joanne Cooney. Chappelhow took up driving when she quit a beauty therapy course in Ireland. "I really like it," she says. "If you're a person who needs company it's not for you, but I like my own company."

If the open road holds little attraction, major logistics companies run graduate trainee schemes. Based in warehouses or depots, graduates co-ordinate the increasingly tight schedules that businesses demand, working out how best to get X from A to B.

"You won't find a business where your problem-solving skills are better used," says Amy Leathard, who joined logistics company TDG's graduate trainee scheme last July. She has since worked on placements delivering for everyone from chemical companies to frozen foods. "The variety is immense," she says. "I've had a lot of exposure to multinational companies."

Leathard, 28, got into logistics after quitting a career in botanical research. "It was very clinical and very repetitive, I didn't really enjoy it," she says. "One of the main attractions of my work now is the variety." That has meant not just fitting together delivery timetables and how clients want their products delivered, but providing strategic advice across the board.

It is not just the variety and endless puzzles that should draw in graduates. From day one trainees are often working out on the front line, with managerial responsibilities most graduates can only dream of.

Mark Sugden, 26, spent a year travelling after graduating from Bath with a business degree. When he got back he had no desire to work in an office. "I didn't want to be stuck behind a desk," he says. Logistics meant hands-on exposure to management. "Friends from university who became analysts are still working in teams," he says. "I've always been managing teams. At night I'm solely responsible for the depot and operations, that's 70 or 80 people."

Sugden joined Gist's graduate trainee scheme nearly three years ago. To get far in logistics you have to make sacrifices, and Sugden has had to move four times and is now working nights. But he reckons it is worth it. "I love the challenge of it," he says. "Every day you're running to a tight timescale. You do get a bit of a buzz."

To find out more about the logistics industry visit the Skills for Logistics website at www.skillsforlogistics.org/