Haulage Companies and Road Congestion as a Game Changer

The vast majority of British haulage companies don’t need to be told that road congestion is a major problem in the UK. However, is the problem now becoming so serious that the entire future of the UK haulage industry could possibly be affected?

Nothing new

Haulage companies back in the 1960s and 1970s already knew all about major congestion. With the possible exception of some of the more rural parts of the United Kingdom, generally speaking, most of the motorways and major roads were already suffering regular and severe congestion. Even 30-40 years ago, much of the southeast of England was already a virtual disaster zone in terms of traffic, as were the great conurbations and their surrounding road networks in most of the rest of the country.
True, in the nearly half century since that time there has been some significant national investment in road building programmes, such as the "notorious from day-1" M25. Yet those infrastructure developments pale into insignificance when measured against the growth in both population and road use during the same period.

Even as far back as 1975, many haulage companies in the UK were issuing instructions to their office personnel not to make promises to customers for delivery times if they involved journeys along the M6 or M1 over substantial distances. Similar guidance was issued for trips between Edinburgh and Glasgow and around the great Lancashire conurbations.

The 21st century

Today, hardly a day goes by without reports in the media of massive traffic jams and chaos on one or another of the UK’s major routes. Thirty years ago, at least some relief for haulage companies could be obtained by planning journeys overnight when the roads were at their quietest. Even that is now becoming impossible, though, as some of the busiest routes, particularly those in the Southeast, are heavily loaded for 18-20 hours a day.

The impact of this on the haulage business cannot be overestimated. Many hauliers are not only finding it impossible to enter into commitments relating to transit times but they are also finding it difficult to balance things such as cost and driver hours due to the fact that their vehicles can be sitting for hours on the motorway going nowhere fast. As far as can be seen, there appears to be little or no national plan for dealing with this growing national crisis that has been evolving for the best part of half a century.

A game changer?

Some dystopian novels have discussed the idea of a society that cannot function because the roads are quite literally and physically blocked with vehicles. Their basic theme is that vehicles have simply multiplied to such an extent that there is physically not enough space on the roads to accommodate them.

Hopefully, this sort of ultimate gridlock chaos hasn’t yet materialised across the whole of the country, though it is arguably perilously close on some of the major routes and bottlenecks. So, one could, in theory, envisage a time where it would be commercially and perhaps logistically impossible for haulage companies to continue their business.

It’s probably fair to say that nobody appears to have any form of answer to this growing problem. There clearly isn’t the space in most parts of the UK to invest in a vast road building programme and there certainly isn’t the money to do so anyway. That’s to say nothing of the environmental objections. At the moment if there is an idea, it appears to consist of simply allowing the problem to become self-limiting as drivers and vehicles are forced off the roads due to jams.

Sooner or later though, someone is going to need to come up with a bright idea and some substantial funds to back it up. It makes for an interesting discussion at the truck stops!