Petrol, pints and pasta: meet one of the lorry drivers plugging Britain’s shortages

arry Davies, a lorry driver from Manchester, needs to keep moving forwards. Idling at the lights? Barely tolerable. Reversing? Never. At 46, driving has cost him many relationships. He ticks them off as we rumble along the outside lane of the M6 heading southbound. He had three children with his first girlfriend, then she left because he was away too much. It was the same story with the second, with whom he had three more kids.

Four years in the care system left him determined to get out of the “street-life crap” and to make something of himself. He followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Royal Artillery at 16 but, fed up and bored, he soon quit the army and got hisvery day, drivers like Davies forfeit comfort – and relationships – to keep the rest of us stocked and supplied. Most products spend time on a truck. Avocados. Medicine. Bricks. As Davies puts it, “we wouldn’t even have trucks without trucks”.

The lorry is parked outside Davies’s favourite pub, Ye Olde No 3, which stands on an old cart route. We’ll return there in the evening, or perhaps not. Davies has control of the truck; the world outside is anarchy. “We’re never in a rush,” he says, “Because it always goes tits up anyway.” We rejoin the motorway and gather speed: “Rock and roll!” Davies hasn’t eaten breakfast yet but when lunchtime approaches the truck stop is full. Stomachs rumbling, we drive on to the next one in Rugby, a market town in Warwickshire. Davies is impressed by the sparkling facilities and range of restaurants – it beats the smorgasbord of fast food you get in most service stations. As he tries out a hoisin-duck wrap from Pret , a friend and fellow driver, Andrew Tustian, calls with bad news.

But there’s camaraderie online, especially on TikTok, home to a subculture of logistics workers. Drivers review truck stops and grumble about facilities or rail at the government. Mainly they gossip about the strange, secret world they occupy, sharing tales of bizarre encounters and photos of spectacular sunsets. Davies’s handle is @BazzinWazzin10.4. He tries to keep itloaded up with loo roll with a rear gunner on the back .

nice

Bye bye UK

good

I read today that there are 600,000 HGV licences in circulation owned by UK nationals that don't use them. Instead of blaming brexit, maybe we should be asking why UK drivers having past their tests then refuse to use them....

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