Lorry driver crisis made worse by Covid - Shapps

[whole diary]

[TonyK]

Just say no. <sniff>

Me and tobacco, my final addiction apart from a sufficiency of port, said farewell on Sunday 12 May 1991. My last blast was a small cigar in the Cock of the North, Henleaze, also known as the Kebab and Calculator, and now more sedately as the Westbury Tavern so as not to upset anybody. Me and Class A were never really an item - they made me feel far too good, so I went no further. The chemical stockpile they call my breakfast turns my wee orange, which is as close to recreational as I am likely to get. Breaks the ice at parties.

Such is life.

[grahame]

From the Daily Mail - a solution to the lorry driver shortage which seems news about 30 years out of date in fact and sentiment.  Enjoy.

[TonyK]

From the Daily Mail - a solution to the lorry driver shortage which seems news about 30 years out of date in fact and sentiment.  Enjoy.

Lovely. Let's see what a diet of fry-ups and Yorkie bars does - or is that out of date too? For the record, my former chimney sweep was a Miss England contestant, not that you would have known behind the overalls and gas mask.

[stuving]

Is this driver shortage still a thing? I don't recall hearing about any fix for it, though lack of news isn't conclusive evidence either way.

But here's another announcement about ferroutage that can be used as an exercise in "spot the deliberatecareless error". It's from XPO, about their new trucking arrangements for Schneider Electric:

XPO’s bespoke solution for Schneider is managed by proprietary XPO technology and moves parts and components on round-trip runs between Schneider’s warehouse in Mions, France, and its production plant in Telford, UK^▸ (United Kingdom). XPO’s road fleet transports containers of freight from Mions to the rail terminal in Vénissieux; from there, the containers travel by train through the Eurotunnel or terminate at Dourges, where they cross the Channel by ferry. Once in the UK, XPO’s road fleet completes the deliveries to Telford. 

XPO is American, but its European operation is run from Lyon (where Mions and Vénissieux are). So is their knowledge of geography really that bad? Probably not, as the French version (which must have been the original) suggests:

La solution sur mesure de XPO pour Schneider est gérée par la technologie propriétaire de XPO et permet de transporter les pièces et composants sur des liaisons aller-retour entre l’entrepôt de Schneider à Mions en France et son usine de production à Telford au Royaume-Uni. La flotte routière de XPO transporte des conteneurs de marchandises de Mions jusqu’au terminal ferroviaire de Vénissieux. De là, les conteneurs voyagent en train par l'Eurotunnel où s’arrêtent à Dourges, pour traverser la Manche en ferry. Une fois au Royaume-Uni, la flotte routière de XPO termine les livraisons à Telford.

I fear the subtleties of the French language have defeated whichever machine or person was given the task of translating that into English. The French uses ou, meaning "or", not où (where). When you look closer at the English text, that use of "where" sounds wrong anyway, and "from where" (which would have been d'où) is better but still not quite right.

So XPO have flogged a system that has the potential of going by rail to near Telford, but just now they can't go all the way so will transship to road trailers near Lille. Delta 3 at Dourges, by the way, is a trimodal transshipment depot - it's got a bit of canal too, and container handlers that can reach over it.