Bangladesh’s newly approved national budget for FY2026-27 rightly continues to prioritise investment in roads, bridges, ports, railways, and logistics infrastructure. These are essential for sustaining economic growth, expanding exports, and strengthening the country’s ambition to become a regional manufacturing and logistics hub. Yet, amid this welcome focus on physical infrastructure, one critical investment remains largely overlooked: the people who keep the nation’s freight moving.
Every container leaving Chattogram port, every export shipment delivered to an inland container depot, every consignment transported to an economic zone, and every truck carrying goods to domestic markets depends on an indispensable workforce—the drivers of heavy vehicles who connect Bangladesh’s supply chains.
However, this workforce is quietly shrinking. Transport operators across the country increasingly report difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified drivers for trucks, covered vans, trailers, and other commercial vehicles. What appears to be a labour shortage is gradually becoming a logistics challenge. If this trend continues, Bangladesh’s next freight bottleneck may not be inadequate highways or congested ports, but the shortage of competent people to operate the vehicles that connect them.
Road transport remains the backbone of Bangladesh’s freight system. Imports arriving at seaports, export cargo destined for global markets, industrial raw materials, agricultural products, and consumer goods all rely on an efficient trucking network. The performance of ports, customs modernisation, inland container depots, and logistics parks therefore depends as much on the availability of skilled drivers as on physical infrastructure itself.
Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in building transport infrastructure over the past decade. New highways, bridges, expressways, and port facilities are improving connectivity, while digital initiatives are streamlining customs and logistics processes. These achievements deserve recognition. However, human capital is also logistics infrastructure. Without skilled drivers, the economic return on these investments will remain below their full potential.
The shortage has several underlying causes. For decades, the freight industry relied on an informal apprenticeship system in which helpers or conductors gradually learned the profession before becoming drivers. That pipeline is weakening. Rising costs have encouraged many operators to reduce the number of assistants they employ, while younger people are increasingly reluctant to enter a profession associated with long working hours, extended periods away from family, difficult working conditions, and limited career prospects. As experienced drivers retire, too few qualified replacements are entering the workforce.
The consequences extend well beyond transport companies. Driver shortages reduce fleet utilisation, delay cargo deliveries, increase logistics costs, and weaken supply chain reliability. Exporters operating under strict shipment schedules face greater uncertainty, while importers incur higher inventory costs. Over time, these inefficiencies undermine Bangladesh’s competitiveness as the country seeks to attract higher-value manufacturing and expand its participation in regional and global supply chains.
The experience of other countries offers an important lesson. The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Australia have all faced shortages of professional freight drivers. Their response has not been limited to recruitment campaigns. Instead, governments and industries have invested in vocational training, modern licensing systems, better working conditions, professional recognition, and technology-enabled workforce management. Their experience shows that driver shortages require long-term workforce strategies rather than short-term fixes.
Bangladesh should adopt a similarly strategic approach. The upcoming budget implementation process provides an opportunity to recognise that professional freight drivers are not simply transport workers but strategic national assets. Just as the country prepares long-term plans for ports, highways, and railways, it should now develop an equally ambitious strategy for the people who operate this infrastructure.
The first step should be to establish a national heavy-vehicle driver development programme in association with the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), National Skill Development Authority (NSDA), technical education institutions, transport associations, and the private sector. Such a programme should create structured training pathways, nationally recognised certification, and continuous professional development for commercial freight drivers.
Specialised training centres should be established in major logistics hubs to provide practical instruction in heavy vehicle operations, road safety, defensive driving, cargo handling, fuel-efficient driving, and the digital competencies increasingly required in modern logistics. With the rise of e-logs, GPS tracking, and digital freight systems, tomorrow’s drivers will need tech fluency just as much as driving skills.
The licensing framework also deserves careful review. While road safety must remain paramount, licensing procedures should support the development of qualified professional drivers through competency-based assessment, transparent testing and efficient processing.
A simulation-based heavy vehicle operator training programme could also be piloted through the Directorate General of Bangladesh Ansar and Village Defence Party (VDP). By earning nationally recognised commercial driving certificates, chosen members will form a reliable reserve of skilled drivers while improving their own local and international job prospects. By building on the discipline and nationwide training infrastructure already available to Bangladesh Ansar, such a programme could strengthen logistics resilience without requiring an entirely new institutional framework.
Improving working conditions is equally important. Dedicated truck terminals with secure parking, rest facilities, sanitation, food services, and basic healthcare along major freight corridors would improve driver welfare, enhance road safety, and make the profession more attractive to younger workers. Digital workforce management, including a national database of certified drivers, could further support recruitment, training records, employment matching, and workforce planning.
Most importantly, Bangladesh needs to change how it views freight drivers. They should no longer be regarded merely as operational necessities but as an essential component of national logistics infrastructure. Every logistics system has a hidden constraint. For Bangladesh, that constraint may soon be the availability of competent drivers rather than roads or ports. Freight vehicles may remain parked not because of mechanical failure or lack of demand, but because nobody is qualified to operate them. Bangladesh has demonstrated that it can build world-class transport infrastructure. The next stage of logistics reform should be to invest with equal determination in the people who keep that infrastructure moving.
Ahamedul Karim Chowdhury is adjunct faculty member at Bangladesh Maritime University.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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