By Charlotte Reid 
The young woman shares some of the pros and cons of her experience as a truck driver in Spain.
Every job position requires specific skills and knowledge that vary depending on the sector. In transport, for example, you must have the appropriate licence for the vehicle you are driving, as well as be up to date with all the rules and restrictions on the road.
In the case of lorry drivers, these requirements are often greater because, in addition to the necessary training and licences, they have to face a series of difficulties that are part of their daily professional life.
These include, for example, long driving hours, even though there are regulations governing rest periods that must be complied with after a certain number of hours worked.
In turn, time pressure can also be added to this, as many of these workers are subject to strict delivery deadlines, which forces lorry drivers to plan routes or adapt to unforeseen events on the road.
This is the experience of, in part, Ainoa Blasco, a Spanish lorry driver who has described her work on Spanish roads in an interview for the podcast “El camionero recomienda” (The lorry driver recommends).
A lorry driver describes what it is like to work on the roads in Spain
As Ainoa reveals, working as a lorry driver on the roads of Spain is an exciting but also very demanding experience. Although she says she loves her profession and cannot see herself doing anything else, she acknowledges that it would be difficult for her to recommend it to young people, given the harsh working conditions and the need to “give up” your personal life. She explains that the profession offers unique moments, every day is different, you meet incredible people and have enriching experiences, but there are also frustrations.
One of the things to highlight in the profession is the regulations on driving breaks: for example, she says that you must take 45-minute breaks after 4½ hours of driving. She considers this important for planning routes and stops well, looking for safe, clean service areas with friendly service. With time and experience, Ainoa says she has learned which places to avoid and which to frequent, something that listening to her colleagues’ recommendations also helps her with.
‘Before, the salary was much better.’
Among the different topics they discuss, Ainoa, who says she has been a lorry driver for three years, reveals that, from her point of view, her profession has more to do with enjoying the pace of life on the road than with earning money. This is what she replies when the interviewer asks her why she thinks young people don’t choose a job like hers:
‘Let’s start with the conditions in the transport industry,’ the lorry driver begins. “On that basis, you’re not going to find transport attractive. Sure, you tell a 20- or 25-year-old: “Hey, you’re going to earn €2,000 a month”, and they think that’s a lot of money, right? But they’ll realise that €2,000 isn’t even enough to live on, not nowadays,” she explains.
Ainoa continues to denounce the situation of working on the roads in our country: ‘Before, in terms of salary, it was much better, life was much cheaper, so there were people who, because of the incentive of being able to have certain comforts or provide certain comforts for their families, could consider it. If you do it for money, I always say that you should never choose this path for money, but rather because you see that it is a life you will be able to lead because it is complicated.”
Thus, she believes that some people may initially decide to become lorry drivers for the money, but that in the end this is not the biggest incentive, but rather the pace of life or the life situation they are in: “But you don’t stay for the money. In fact, there are many people who, for economic reasons, have said, “I’d rather earn £1,500 in a warehouse, work my eight hours, and go home, because financially, it’s not worth it,”” admits Ainoa.