Britons told ‘not to panic’ as driver shortage strips shelves

In post-pandemic, post-Brexit turmoil, Britain is running on empty.

Emptied shelves in a suburban London hardware store this week.

Britain is running on empty. In post-pandemic, post-Brexit turmoil, the country has been warned “don’t panic” as a shortage of truck drivers means empty shelves, not only for hardware and fuel but also for food.

The Boris Johnson government is drawing up plans to draft in the military to drive trucks loaded with essential goods as well as petrol tankers as major suppliers BP and ExxonMobil begin petrol and diesel rationing.

Food supply chains have been under pressure for months. Companies now routinely warn people that “next day” or “same week” offers are unavailable. Stocks on shelves in supermarkets and hardware stores are haphazard. Menu selections at fast food chains have been ­restricted.

But as well as the fuel dramas, in the past week the situation was exacerbated by a shortage in the supplies of carbon dioxide which, apart from medical purposes, is used to stun animals before slaughter at abattoirs, provide the fizz in soft drinks and keep beer flowing.

Downing Street was forced to provide three weeks of financial support, which could run into the millions, for the country’s two fertiliser manufacturers to restart operations. CO2 is a by-product of fertiliser production.

This comes amid a “perfect storm” of crises, with small energy firms going bust amid soaring wholesale gas prices, up 250 per cent this year, and household bills under significant pressure.

Downing Street said: “We acknowledge there are issues facing many industries across the UK” ahead of the coming winter.

The fuel shortage has forced the closure of many petrol stations and is expected to last for at least four to six weeks as the industry tries to recruit more than 300 truck drivers.

BP head of UK retail Hanna Hofer told the Cabinet Office a week ago about the “bad, very bad” situation with just two-thirds of service stations with normal supply levels and the situation rapidly declining.

On Friday BP announced it was cutting deliveries to 90 per cent of petrol stations to ration fuel reserves.

ExxonMobil, which supplies Tesco petrol stations, said its sites are out of fuel around Dorset, the Isle of Wight and Devon.

Petrol station owners say they also have been caught short by the higher than normal demand for fuel because people are more reluctant to take public transport.

But the government said the issue was not about supplies but, rather, driver shortages.

The country is short of about 100,000 truck drivers, a mix of Britons leaving the industry and Europeans returning home after Brexit and the pandemic. Driving tests to recruit new drivers were halted for nearly seven months during lockdown. Some councils have cancelled garden waste collections.

There are also widespread shortages of labour in the food processing industry, resulting in low supplies of chicken and meat.

Road Haulage Association executive Rod McKenzie said the supply chain was “creaking” with glitches.

He told the BBC: “It’s as simple as this: everything we get in Britain comes on the back of a truck. So if there is a shortage of HGV (heavy goods vehicle) drivers – and there is by 100,000 – then it is inevitable that we are not going to get all the things we want when we want them. It is not a case of running out, and people should not panic buy.”

Industry leaders have asked for a short-term relaxation of visa requirements for drivers, but there is a shortfall across most of Europe.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said there was an endemic problem with retention and recruitment in the industry. He said the country had 600,000 people qualified to drive the big trucks, but only 300,000 chose to work in the industry because EU migration had suppressed wages and conditions. He called for better working conditions.

All of this is adding to inflationary pressure and the Bank of England warned on Thursday that inflation could rise above 4 per cent, double the target rate.