Brits ask Germans for help: fancy vice?

No fuel at the petrol stations, no vegetables on the supermarket shelf – the truck crisis is not having an easy time for Great Britain. Now the government is trying to recruit Germans with older driving licenses as truck drivers.

Many Germans in Great Britain are amazed when they receive mail from Baroness Vere these days. The aristocratic lady is State Secretary for “Streets, Busses and Places”: streets, buses and squares and politely advises the recipients of the letters to please hire themselves out as drivers.

“Your valuable skills have never been so urgently needed as they are now,” advertises the Baroness and virtually promises that the opportunity for a dream job in the driver’s cab of a truck has never been so cheap. German investment bankers and university professors rub their eyes in amazement. How could they of all people pull the cart out of the mud for the British, or rather: steer the truck out of the depot?

But dear Germans …

The secret lies in the good old German driver’s license. In order to fill the gap of 100,000 missing truck drivers, the Ministry of Transport has just targeted a million people who the authorities know have a truck driver’s license. And that includes many Germans who live in Great Britain.

Because if you got your driver’s license in Germany before 1999, then you are automatically allowed to drive small trucks up to 7.5 tons, even if you have never done it before. However, the German community has not yet heard of a run on this unexpected opportunity to change careers.

… as criminals

The Department of Transportation is by no means the only one racking its brains over how to get a grip on the transportation and supply crisis in Britain. Justice Minister Dominic Raab brought up this week to use asylum seekers and prison inmates for the starving industries. The Ministry of the Interior also took action by immediately stalling this attempt.

Now there should actually be 5000 special visas for truck drivers from the EU – which should only be valid until Christmas. That is only realistic, because of the thousands of EU truckers who were stuck for days at Christmas in a total mess from Brexit and pandemic travel restrictions without sanitary facilities, water and food around Dover, no one is guaranteed to want to spend another Christmas on the island. Probably not the months before either.

Even Brexit fan without fuel

As for the petrol slack, government sources estimate it will be about a week before fuel is flowing everywhere again. Until then, however, not only nurses, plumbers, butchers and midwives have to leave their cars. Celebrities are also hit: Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit campaign at the time, tweeted annoyed that he had stopped at seven gas stations in vain – which brought him mostly malicious pleasure.

But soccer star Christiano Ronaldo was also affected. British newspapers report that two of his employees stood in line for six hours in vain with the Bentley and the Range Rover at a gas station in the dreamy town of Wilmslow in Cheshire before they drove away, annoyed when no tanker came. Fortunately, the Lamborghini still had enough fuel in the tank so that Ronaldo came to practice on time. It is useful to have a few spare cars in such a situation.