Precarious mobilities: occupational auto-mobilities, precarity and relationality amongst new truck drivers in the UK

In this paper, we advance debates on labour precarity by examining occupational auto-mobilities as a key site through which embodied and relational dimensions of precarity are produced. To do so, we empirically examine the experiences of newly qualified (‘new pass’)11New pass' is a commonly used term in the truck driving industry, including by our research participants, to refer to newly licensed drivers. In the paper, we use the terms new pass/new passes and recent entrants somewhat interchangeably. truck drivers in the UK. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative interviews (2023–2025) with new passes, interviews with insurance and road haulage industry representatives, and observations of a social media group for new drivers (2023–2024), we show how new drivers are at the sharp end of precarious employment and everyday work, with the latter inseparable from their heightened exposure to corporeal harm and vulnerability. Conceptually, we bring insights on labour precarity in logistics into conversation with a Butlerian account of precarity and relationality to show how precarious mobile work emerges, is embodied, and navigated by new drivers through the entanglement of structural forces, discursive practices and lesser-known relational practices grounded in drivers’ interdependence and ethical obligations to one another. We argue that the labour precarity faced by new truck drivers is actively generated by financialised insurance capital, the political-economic conjuncture of the UK haulage industry, and state policies related to driver training and licensing that reproduce norms of self-responsibility and risk-taking amongst truck drivers. By centring new truck drivers’ everyday experiences, we demonstrate how ‘smooth’ and ‘efficient’ logistics flows are ultimately sustained by precarious employment, exposure to corporeal harm, and the unpaid, relational labour undertaken by drivers for each other.