And what other surprises lie down the road?
With Britain in the middle of a sudden crisis in petrol supply (as gas is known locally), the back-of-shul conversation centered on where there was fuel within range of London’s Golders Green or Stamford Hill neighborhoods; drivers ventured up the highway to Manchester to fill up; and a car journey to the shops became an existential dilemma.
But just what caused the sudden fuel crunch, when will normal service resume, and what other surprises lie down the road?
The immediate trigger for the crisis isn’t a war in the Middle East biting into fuel supply, but a shortage of truck drivers, to the tune of 100,000, according to a widely quoted figure from the Road Haulage Association. That delivery shortfall was exacerbated by a spike in demand as panic buying set in, with fistfights breaking out in some places as motorists queued for hours to fill up.
But driver shortfalls are only part of the explanation. Industry data shows that Poland, for example, is short of 124,000 drivers, with no supply problems. More to the point, why did the driver shortage bite now? According to a report by trans.INFO, a transport-industry website, trans-shipment within Britain by foreign-based drivers (known as “cabotage”) has fallen as a result of Brexit. Add to that the supply-chain problems inflicted by Covid, and you have a fuel crisis, “oven-ready” as Boris Johnson likes to say.
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