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Fuel shortages in the UK?

being a lorry driver in Britain looks like a quite lucrative job with up to 60k £ yearly, which I understand is quite a substantial salary.

Yes; 60k is very good, for someone with a relatively low IQ who could not get that any other way, short of working hard as a self employed builder, probably with a lot of undeclared (cash) income. I have known lots of builders; it can be a back-breaking job. A lot of them end up having back surgery. And that business has a terrible reputation for crooks and cowboys. Sitting in a truck is much nicer. The problem, right across Europe, is that trucking is not a job young people like to do, and they like doing it less as time goes by, so the average driver age is rising. The current UK figure is 53. The issue, like all these, has many components, one of which is that some truckers have to sleep in their cab and that is pretty crap and they generally really hate it, but that isn’t the case (in the UK) for fuel delivery drivers who have a normal day job (early start though). Similar for supermarket delivery drivers (another public panic induced shortage there, with panic buying of pasta and canned food).

Last month I needed to replace my refrigerator. Some models had lead times of 6 to 8 months

That’s a separate thing, though not entirely unrelated. This is partly from a semiconductor industry insider:

The “shortage” is to 90% psychological. Happens around once a decade, or more. I’ve seen quite a number since I started manufacturing in 1978.

This time, the sequence was:

1) the really big customers (automotive/phone etc) got scared due to CV19 and started cancelling orders, expecting falling demand. They were able to cancel (or massively reschedule) because they are huge firms which means the contracts they signed are not worth the paper they are written on. This really p1ssed off the semi manufacturers, because these customers have shafted them to operate on minimal margins

2) the end user demand fell much less than expected, and some not at all due to people at home having a lot more time to “play”. Panic ordering set in to replace the cancelled orders. Supply chain broke down (huge volumes involved)

3) various publications wrote editorials about chip shortage

4) the medium-sized customers started double/triple/quadruple ordering at the distributors, creating the chip bubble we see today

The end result is total chaos in the supply chain management. There may be a small deficit in wafer fab capacity, perhaps a few percent, but no more.

The responsibilty of the whole mess lies squarely with purchasing departments at a few major customers in automotive and consumer markets, and then panic buying (multiple ordering) by [insert your country’s favourite big industrial players].

The chip bubble will IMHO explode in the next few months. I am already seeing 32F4 ARM chips delivered from ST who were quoting Q3 2022 only a month ago. Of course the mfgs and distributors will try to conceal this imminent collapse for as long as they can because it keeps prices at maximum, so I am seeing 40wk lead time on a chip which (if I order it “deliver ASAP”) will probably arrive in 8-16 weeks. They now have only a few months in which to book big orders at big prices and after that it will be a bloodbath. Dog eat dog

So, like petrol, it’s just people going crazy There is no massive new demand for refrigerators.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

The problem, right across Europe, is that trucking is not a job young people like to do, and they like doing it less as time goes by, so the average driver age is rising. The current UK figure is 53.

well, i suppose some campaigning would not hurt then. As you say, it is a pretty good salary and certainly has a future in Britain. And if companies are desparate to look for truckers, why not introduce some recruiting scheme which pais for the license with a 2 year bond or so.

I looked into it here a while ago and it was said that the trucking industry is in the hands of an ethnic group who keeps most others out. Another bit is that quite a lot of truckers need to do hard physical labour loading and off loading often by hand.

A friend of mine is doing international trucking from Bulgaria and he loves it. Salary at times is better than the (nominal) salary of a government minister. Which sais both for the demand and what people in “regular” jobs are paid. Last I heard, a senior ministry employee had a nominal salary of about €500 p.m, an average pension is €150.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

A bit of British humour

Last Edited by Ibra at 03 Oct 08:21
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

So, like petrol, it’s just people going crazy

I don’t really see the exact relation. With fuel it’s super simple. Lots and lots of fuel is stored in fuel storage facilities. The only thing needed is to get the fuel from storage to the gas stations. The only thing needed is trucks and drivers.

A bit of googling. A standard fuel truck carries 40k liters of fuel. Storage capacity at the gas station can vary a lot, but a “standard large” station has around 200k liters (according to Circle K). They assume 40k liters is enough for 1000 cars (40 liters per car). 200k liters is enough for 5000 cars. How long does it take to fill up a car (from parking at the pump and until you leave) ? I would say at least 3-4 minutes (highly dependent on what other stuff you are doing of course). Let’s say 3 minutes, just to have a number.

In one hour you can fill up 20 cars from one pump. To fill up the 1000 cars from the truck takes 3000 minutes with one pump. This is 50 hours. Let’s say the tank at the gas station is half full (100k liters), and it has 10 pumps. It would still take 12.5 hours to empty that tank (or those tanks, there are probably several). This is plenty time to re-fill the gas station even at the most remote places. Or in other words, one single fuel truck with one single driver can full up several gas station in 12.5 hours.

The main bottle neck is the pump capacity at the gas station. Filling up each car takes a lot of time (insane amount of time) compared with the volumes we are talking about.

I don’t buy it. Those gas stations must have been severely depleted to start with to be able to empty them before they are filled up. Or they only have miniature sized tanks, thus the requirement for frequent re-filling is high. A slight dip in the supply will therefore empty some of them, and this shortage will spread out exponentially. Either way, the root cause can only be a dip in the supply line that was stretched to the limit to start with.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

You say you dont understand why there can be a shortage of fuel at petrol stations if supplies occur as normal, then go on to write this:

LeSving wrote:

As for myself, I never bother filling up my diesel car before the low light start shining. Then I fill it up completely. Now, IF I envisioned a shortage of fuel, I would fill it up no matter how much was left.

Cant you see? It is EXACTLY that behaviour that causes several times the amount of fuel to be used over a short period of time than before!! Additionally, now, having driven for a few days, but again only say 2/3rds full, you go buy more fuel you wouldnt normally get “just to be sure”, you havent returned to your previous behaviour of letting the car run until the little light comes on…. Now multiply this by EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY and there is within days a lack of fuel at petrol stations….Get it?

Edit: its no different to Ice cream temporarily disappearing out of supermarkets in a heat wave.

Last Edited by skydriller at 03 Oct 10:21

RobertL18C wrote:

Fortunately I go to work on a push bike and while I haven’t bought petrol in a month, I still have half a tank.

This is really the knub of the matter.

So many people, by choice, have made themselves “obligate motorists”: they are 100% dependent on the car, and their life is in chaos if they can’t drive for just a few days.

If more people took up active travel to work even just on the nice days, then the response to petrol queues would be “I’ll just ride my bike instead and accept I’ll get wet if it’s raining” rather than tailing cement trucks for 20 miles. But instead they choose to be 100% dependent on driving 5-7 days a week, and worse than that, oppose measures such as LTN 1/20 standard bike facilities, built in a useful networked fashion, like crabs in a bucket trying to pull anyone who tries to escape back in.

Too many cars being driven on too many short journeys with too few occupants. 80% of the cars I see during commute hours contain just the driver. It’s enormously wasteful and has ruined our towns and cities.

Andreas IOM

I thought I’d drive the scenic route round some filling stations this morning when heading out to walk the dog. Every single station I passed had fuel and no queues, I did see a bit of variation in price from £1.379 up to £1.449. Sainsburies, Morrisons, Tesco, Shell, BP and a couple of independent garages. As suggested, now I suspect it’s just a problem of the south east.

LeSving wrote:

The main bottle neck is the pump capacity at the gas station. Filling up each car takes a lot of time (insane amount of time) compared with the volumes we are talking about.

Perhaps another bottle neck are the roads leading to the petrol stations en route and at the destination. Typically in London there there will be a queue blocking the single lane road leading up to one, sometimes in both directions as non-queueing cars try to get past the queue or “jump” it by coming the other way. I drove back from the suburbs yesterday, and it took twice the normal time. (No, I didn’t stop for petrol :-)

No problem when all the local petrol stations have run dry of course!

White Waltham EGLM, United Kingdom

Off_Field wrote:

I did see a bit of variation in price from £1.379 up to £1.449.

I was curious about this, but haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere.

Are the petrol statations in the UK dramatically raising their prices due to the scaracity?

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Not dramatically – probably a few %.

Here there are no queues now, so it looks like people are getting bored.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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