Hanging on to what they’ve got

Recruitment in the heavy lift and project freight forwarding sector is sluggish, according to leading practitioners in the field. With the outlook uncertain, people in good roles are tending to stay put, rather than seek greener grass elsewhere. Chris Lewis reports.

Few of us grew up dreaming of being an expert in heavy lift and project cargo; most people come into the industry by sheer chance. Freight forwarding or logistics itself is not a sector that figures highly on the agenda of school or college careers advisors’ desks – and the project, heavy lift sector is regarded as a niche within a niche.

Much recruitment activity in the heavy lift segment centres on attracting people who have already built up at least some knowledge and experience. However, the task of getting people to join the industry in the first place is all-important.

The market is currently in a state of stasis, said Jason Dickens, founder of UK-based specialist project forwarding recruitment company, Rockbottom Consulting. While his company’s consultancy activities remain reasonably busy, and there is certainly enough capital project activity to keep forwarders in the sector prosperous, movement of people within the industry is quite static, he said.

“Larger global forwarders have put a freeze on recruitment largely due to performance outside of project forwarding/energy logistics,” he explained. “Smaller forwarders have struggled because freight rates, which had been very high during the covid lockdown, have come down sharply allowing the larger companies with more capacity to offer rates they simply cannot match.”