This is what market failure looks like. There’s a shortage of HGV drivers in an economy that relies on moving mountains of heavy goods. Road haulage companies complain bitterly that they can’t recruit; operators are turning business away for lack of drivers.

Yet at the same time there are large numbers of the unskilled, especially the young, who need training to get a job, or an upgrade from zero-hours, low-paid work to something better. Easy, you might think, to connect the two – but it’s not happening, according to last week’s report from the House of Commons transport committee.

Employers turn abroad, hiring 60,000, mainly eastern Europeans, yet still not plugging the gap

It’s another case of a British industry failing to deliver, unable to sort out its own problems with a government disinclined to intervene. In a country suffering weak productivity, low skills, ineffectual unions and stagnant living standards, the road haulage industry offers a depressing example of industrial inertia meeting the anti-intervention dogma of government.

The Road Haulage Association says it is short of 60,000 drivers, with an ageing workforce shedding another 40,000 by next year. Employers told the committee how hard they try to attract drivers – but plainly not that hard. They all want ready-made, fully trained drivers with several years’ experience. Many turn abroad, hiring 60,000 mainly eastern Europeans, yet still not plugging the gap. Few companies run their own training schemes, complaining that others just poach them.

Failure to train staff is a UK industrial disease, so from next April the government is imposing a levy on large employers to pay for apprenticeships, (resisted by the CBI). But there will be no apprenticeship for road haulage: the government says people should pay to get their own licences, though courses cost £3,000, plus a £230 fee for a stiff test which applicants often require several attempts to pass. They also face long waits to do so, due to lack of government examiners.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A driver grabs some rest. One describes being seen as ‘second-class citizens, everywhere we go. Disgusting toilets and stinking laybys. We’re treated like scum by the places we deliver to.’ Photograph: Mzwele/EPA

The economic orthodoxy says a labour shortage should lead to a pay rise until people are enticed into vacant jobs – but that doesn’t happen as industries conspire to keep pay low, despite the shortages. Truck drivers get an average £26,000 – the median wage – but pay hasn’t risen in years for stressful and responsible work. Unite, representing most transport workers, says there’s a race to the bottom on pay. Employers fill gaps with agency staff instead of raising rates. Big haulage firms subcontract work, often sub-sub-contracted down the supply line, each creaming money off, until the job is done by low paying, fly-by-night operators.

I spoke to Mick Johnson, an agency driver from Grimsby, who says he finds eastern Europeans at the bottom of the chain, paid Latvian rates of €1.20 an hour, living in their cabs for three months. His union says some foreign drivers’ bonded terms amount to modern slavery. Johnson is in Unite, but 85% of drivers aren’t unionised. “They’re hard to organise,” he says. “Independent types, working alone, who think they can sort it themselves.” He finds many stay with low payers on under £9 an hour, with outfits such as Eddie Stobart notorious for not recognising unions. “But drivers think ‘Better the devil you know,’” he says.

Truck drivers’ terms wouldn’t be accepted in many industries. Away from home for long stretches, they are only paid for driving hours: no pay for waiting while loading or for compulsory rest breaks, nor for overnight stops, with most sleeping in a bunk in the cab as unpaid security guards. Lucky ones get £20 for overnight expenses to park in a truck stop, but unpaid for nighttime, they usually save it and park in a lay-by.

The report describes the squalor of truck stops, and that is where they exist; whole districts and big cities have none. “Second-class citizens, everywhere we go,” says Johnson, describing disgusting toilets and stinking laybys, “We’re treated like scum by the places we deliver to.” White men account for 94% of drivers: the report calls for more women and ethnic minorities but this is a culture that is hostile to both.

Profit margins are genuinely tight, a click of a mouse finds the lowest bidders for deliveries – but low pay and squalor creates the lack of drivers. Government needs to step in to stop an industry eating itself. Here’s an obvious need for a wages council, to set national pay rates and to stop companies undercutting each other. But they were abolished by Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher.

The report admits that importing “substantial numbers of non-UK EU nationals is likely to be suppressing wage growth”. However, the Road Haulage Association poll of its companies found a majority perversely voting for Brexit. Small operators feared EU competitors with tanks full of cheap EU diesel moving in on their business. Yet many are using eastern European drivers to keep pay low. Their fears were unrealistic, as the report finds just 1% of British trade involves foreign companies taking UK haulage business. But the Brexit vote swung on just such myths.

Unite fears companies will use Brexit to drop EU regulation, such as the 48-hour working time rule. Many drivers voted for Brexit hoping to avoid the EU certificate of professional competence, a seven-hour annual course. We wait to see if the Tory deregulators negotiating Brexit will opt for more dangerous lorries on the road. Already the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency – the trucks regulator – is too under-resourced to catch all the cowboys, a sign of the shrinking state.

The romantic image is of the rugged Yorkie bar trucker, driving through the night with virile skill and manly competence. The railway station in York – the home city of Rowntree’s – used to carry a poster boasting “Where the men are hunky and the chocolate’s chunky”. Recruiters lament that this old stereotype has been replaced in the public mind with images of migrants climbing into trucks, cyclists crushed under wheels, and lorries stacked up for days at ports. That doesn’t help. But even then they feel people in worse jobs might offer themselves only if the new apprenticeships paid for their training.

The story of road haulage is mirrored time and again in British industry, with employers failing to work collaboratively, unions too weak to force good pay and conditions, and no government intervention. Ministers boast that once again we have an industrial strategy. If it doesn’t apply here, why bother?