Nina Droff, edited by Gauthier Delomez 06:05, October 20, 2022

Since the unblocking of certain refineries, the transport companies which supply the service stations have been operating at full speed.

Europe 1 went to the logistics center of a company in Plessis-Pâte in the Paris region, where operations managers are racking their brains to keep up with the fuel delivery rate.

With the end of the strike in part of the refineries like that of Esso-ExxonMobil in Port-Jérôme, the fuel transport companies are overwhelmed with work, like those of the Premat company.

Between the exploding demand for fuel and the delay to catch up, the number of orders has increased by more than 30%, according to Olivier Lagadec, director of "fuel" operations for the transport company.

30% more orders

On that day, the company had to make around 100 deliveries with only 35 tanker drivers available.

Managers therefore have no choice but to double the working hours of their drivers.

"For several weeks, our drivers have been working six to seven days a week, they also work on weekends, they do a lot more laps than usual", explains Olivier Lagadec at the microphone of Europe 1.

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Especially since the sector has already suffered for several years from a shortage of drivers.

"We are still looking for it today", laments the director of operations, "if we had ten more drivers, that would already help us a lot."

Faced with this unsustainable pace, the company sometimes has to give up deliveries or postpone them.

"We do our best to optimize our drivers, but unfortunately we can't deliver to everyone," says Cathy Bertaux of the company Premat, "we prioritize the major brands and our regular customers."

Queues at oil depots

Not to help the situation, some slowdowns linked to strikes persist at the level of oil depots.

With some depots still closed, drivers sometimes have to travel twice as many miles to recharge their trucks.

The depots that are still open are taken over by trucks, which creates queues.

"Sometimes there are three or four hours of waiting to complete a single lap. We lose a lot of efficiency on that," laments Olivier Lagadec.

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Employees hope for a return to normal as soon as possible, but according to them, it will take several weeks before demand calms down.