What The Truck: Ensuring welfare interventions to improve the lives of India’s truck drivers

Unfortunately, truck drivers don't get their fair share of economic growth. Living a life as a trucker in India comes with challenges.

Most truck drivers drive up to 14 hours a day, staying over the road for more than 300 days per year, sacrificing their time at home with loved and dear ones. While their truck is adorned like a bride with flashy LEDs and catchy phrases written on a colorful-painted body, they themselves live in hostile conditions without access to sanitized food/clean drinking water or a decent place to rest or sleep while taking the risk of fatalities and live-long injury.

What The Truck is a social initiative by Trucknetic, a Delhi based startup building Uber for trucks in India. Trucknetic was founded by Arham P Jain in September 2019 with the single aim of eradicating the inefficiencies in the trucking industry and reducing the cost of logistics in India that stands at 14-18 percent of the GDP to single-digit aligned with the vision of his honorable PM Modi.

The What The Truck initiative is aimed at impacting the lives of truck drivers in India. The initiative of what the truck strongly believes in reciprocating the efforts of the truck drivers who keep the economy afloat by ensuring regular movement of goods and material throughout the country.

With more consumers moving online and delivery timelines reducing to minutes, the logistics sector needs more truck drivers to meet the demand and supply challenges across all three delivery miles.

While the demand for truckers grow, the number of people opting for commercial truck driving as a career or profession dips rapidly. It is estimated that India will have 450 drivers for every 1,000 trucks on the road in 2023.

Meanwhile, the lack of standard life offered to truckers by the broken and fragmented trucking industry of India have left the industry with fewer aspirants and an acute shortage, despite a growing economy.

The profession to attract more people needs to reinvent itself and grant the truckers better compensation, better social structure, strong support from industry and government, more respect and transparency.

Having realized the acute shortage of truck drivers in India, Trucknetic started off with What the Truck in 2022 to drive interventions around truck driver welfare and make the trucking ecosystem sustainable. What the Truck is a section-8 Non Profit Organization (NGO), registered as Highway Heroes India Foundation, that works for the betterment of truck drivers.

"The problems in the trucking industry are forcing truck drivers to leave this sector. We want to create a safe space for them so that they can be productive, and profitable, and our economy never sees a truck driver shortage," said Trucknetic founder Arham Pratap Jain.

"We want to make the world a better place for all the 2 million Indian truck drivers out there, building a happier, safer, and more respected driver community. We want them to believe and know there is a better life for them!," he added.

By driving interventions for truck driver welfare, What the Truck intends on providing transit insurance to truck drivers in India to provide them compensation for disability caused by injuries or to compensate their families in case of death during the transit. It is also conducting free medical check-up campaigns to address the pressing issue of deteriorating health among truck drivers pertaining to musculoskeletal issues, chronic pain & sleep deprivation.

They also offers formal driver education and training programs to truck drivers to impart the necessary skills and knowledge base required for employment opportunities at equitable income, while providing certified trainings for them to safely navigate on the roads thereby reducing the risk of fatalities.

What The Truck's mission has always been to build a solution that will solve India's trucking problem as well as to ensure the welfare of its truck driving community.