AFP, Mumbai, March 27: After three years of driving on some of the world's most dangerous roads, 20-year-old Indian truck driver Moin Sheikh wants out of the gruelling job.
He complains he is underpaid, overworked, harassed by police and frightened by the reckless driving on India's traffic-choked roads, which have the world's highest rate of fatalities.
'I want to leave. The police treat us like dirt and driving at night is dangerous,' Moin, who gets just 3,000 rupees a month ($65) from his private trucking company employer, told AFP at a Mumbai suburban truck halt.
He is not alone in disliking the job: India faces the worst shortage of truckers in the industry's history as drivers are put off by demanding work hours, low pay, high risks and lengthy stretches away from home and families, companies say.
'We face a 40 per cent shortfall, which means we need three million more drivers,' said R.K. Gulati, spokesman for the All India Motor Transport Congress, a transporters' lobby group.
'This is the worst manpower crisis the industry has faced,' said Bal Malkit Singh, a city transporter and former head of the Bombay Goods Transport Association.
Singh, who operates over 300 trucks across the country, says the shortage of drivers is so acute that 10 per cent of his Bal Roadlines transport fleet stands idle at any point in time due to a lack of drivers.
Other transport operators report that as much as 15 per cent of their fleet is out of service for the same reason.
One of the main problems is that the government has raised the educational bar for truck drivers, requiring a minimum grade 10 education—or high school to the age of 15 -- to carry hazardous goods.
Even for regular freight, a driver needs to have completed middle school to age 13, and young people with these qualifications are more keen to work in offices than spend long hours behind the wheel.
Truck drivers in India are also reluctant to stay in the job long, as the lack of a co-ordinated patrol network means they face a high risk of being mugged on highways by gangs.
Moin says he has been robbed twice, losing his wallet and mobile phone.
All this comes as bad news for the Asian giant's rapidly expanding economy, which already faces transport bottlenecks because of dilapidated road networks and other hurdles.
India's two-million-mile (4.2 million kilometre) road network, the world's second largest after the United States, accounts for nearly 70 per cent of the country's freight movement. The remaining 30 per cent goes by rail.
'The driver shortage is having a wider impact on the economy' as goods pile up for transport, said Vishwas Udgirkar, senior India transport director at global consultancy Deloitte.
'It is making efficient logistics tough,' Udgirkar said.
The trucker shortage is so bad that many fleet owners break the law requiring commercial vehicles to operate with two drivers so that one can take rest breaks from driving.
One solution for the company bosses would be to raise wages, but they say they are unable to because of cost pressures amid rising fuel and other commodity prices.
Charanjeet Singh, 22, another driver, earns just $60 a month for travelling between commercial capital Mumbai in the west and Jammu in the north, transporting apples and spices.
'I'm worried about my future on such low wages,' Charanjeet says.