Where have the UK's lorry drivers gone?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The UK's suffering a huge shortage of lorry drivers, but where have 100,000 drivers gone? The shortage is now having an impact on everything from chicken in restaurants, to mattresses in furniture shops, fuel at pumps and even beer in pubs. So what's going on? We hear from drivers, driving trainers, retailers and the wholesale industry and what's causing the shortfall and what can be done to solve it.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, why it's tough being a British |
| 0:08.7 | lorry driver these days. It's the living out of a microwave. It's the being away from your family. |
| 0:14.1 | It's the working weekends. Probably won't be home on a Friday night at 6 o'clock to be in the pub with your |
| 0:18.7 | mates and you're going to get 48 hours off |
| 0:21.1 | to do your washing, and then you're going to come back to work. That doesn't really sound |
| 0:25.0 | very appealing, does it? Perhaps not. They say there's 100,000 drivers missing from the UK fleet, |
| 0:31.4 | the result of COVID and Brexit. Some reckon Brits may have to cancel Christmas. |
| 0:37.2 | We're not going to have to cancel Christmas, no, but we are going to see a reduced range in |
| 0:42.1 | the supermarkets with shortages of certain products. |
| 0:45.1 | That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:51.2 | It all began with fast food chains running out of milkshakes. |
| 0:55.5 | I'm totally upset, bro. |
| 0:57.4 | Gutted. I can't even get the milkshake, mate. |
| 0:59.6 | I'm just gutted, mate. |
| 1:00.8 | You know, when you're just so in shock, it just starts my day, mate. |
| 1:05.0 | Probably a bottle of, oh, they don't even got water. |
| 1:08.3 | But for more and more British consumers, the new supply crunch is becoming no laughing matter. |
| 1:14.1 | Since August, chickens not been reaching chicken restaurants. Milk's been running out at supermarkets. |
| 1:19.2 | Mattresses have been missing from furniture stores. The beers even run dry at pubs. Surely not. |
| 1:25.8 | Richard Walker of the Iceland supermarket chain says this could just be the beginning. |
| 1:30.7 | I think we'll see growing problems at shelf. |
| 1:34.3 | We already have bread deliveries being cancelled by about 100 stores per day. |
... |
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