• Motorists in Britain expressed frustration as they hunted for hours or sat snarled in queues to fill their tanks after gas stations in major cities ran dry due to a trucker shortage that has prompted the government to put the army on standby.

• Britain’s transport minister pleaded with motorists to stop filling up old water bottles with fuel at gas stations after panic buying left pumps dry across major cities.

• Queues of drivers snaked back from those petrol stations that were still serving in major cities, though dozens of forecourts were closed with signs saying they had no petrol or diesel.

• A post-Brexit shortage of lorry drivers, exacerbated by a halt to truck-driving-licence testing during COVID lockdowns, has sown chaos through supply chains, raising the spectre of shortages and price rises in the run up to Christmas.

• An air of chaos has gripped the country in recent weeks as the shortage of truckers strained supply chains and a spike in European wholesale natural gas prices tipped energy companies into bankruptcy.

• The situation has brought back memories of the fuel crisis in the country during September 2000.

What led to this crisis?

• The British government insists there is no fuel shortage.

• However, the process of keeping the country’s gas stations flowing involves the seamless interaction of a number of activities. So when one or more aspects of the process are out of kilter, the whole system can grind to a halt.

• Some blame Prime Minister Boris Johnson for failing to address the issue of a lack of truckers he has been warned about for months. There is a shortage of around 100,000 drivers across the trucking sector overall. Replenishing stocks becomes even more difficult if the driver shortage remains and people persist in their changed routines. 

• The pro-Brexit Conservative government is keen to downplay talk that the truck driver shortage is a result of Britain’s departure from the European Union.

• However, when the country left the economic orbit of the EU at the start of this year, one of the bloc’s main tenets ceased to apply the freedom of people to move within the EU to find work. With Brexit, tens of thousands of drivers left the UK to go back to their homes in the EU, further pressuring an industry already facing long-term staffing issues.

• Post-Brexit immigration rules mean EU citizens can no longer live and work visa-free in Britain, as they could when the UK was a member of the bloc.

• Also, the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the staffing issues, prompting thousands of EU drivers to leave the UK. The series of lockdown restrictions also led to difficulties in training and testing new home-grown drivers to replace those who left.

• It’s not just the trucking industry facing labor shortages following Brexit and the pandemic. There are concerns within the farming community, for example, that much of this year’s harvest will be left to rot because there aren’t enough agricultural workers around.

How is the govt handling the crisis?

• The government is trying to entice former British drivers back into the industry, as well as to accelerate the training of new drivers. And it has put army personnel on standby to drive the fuel tankers.

• It’s also offering visas to 5,000 foreign drivers to come to the UK for three months.

• The hope is that the demand-and-supply balance will get back to normal soon. The Petrol Retailers Association said there are early signs the fuel crisis was ending.

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