Motorists stranded in huge queues in front of gas stations and signs indicating "out of order".
For several days, hundreds of petrol pumps have been empty in the UK.
Already, the British had observed almost empty shelves in some supermarkets.
Yet the country has no shortage of fuels or consumer products.
In reality, he faces a shortage of truck drivers available to deliver the products.
For the British government, the Covid-19 is the only culprit of this crisis.
"The health restriction measures linked to the Covid-19 pandemic have disrupted the training of truck drivers. This has caused a shortage of manpower", pleaded the British Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Schapps, interviewed Friday, September 24 on the Skynews channel.
According to him, Germany and Poland are currently experiencing the same problem.
The Covid-19 pandemic has indeed resulted, across the Channel, in the closure for months of training centers for new drivers across the Channel.
According to the Road Haulage Association (RHA), which brings together transporters, 40,000 training tests had to be canceled during successive confinements.
"It is obvious, the pandemic has had negative consequences on the workforce," confirms to France 24 Jacob Kirkegaard, researcher at the Peterson Institute, a private and independent think tank interested in international economic problems, and at the office Brussels member of the German Marshall Fund.
A shortage of staff "amplified" by Brexit
But if the whole world is facing this problem, the situation in the United Kingdom seems worse than elsewhere.
Faced with this observation, many experts point the finger at Brexit.
Before the United Kingdom's effective departure from the European Union on January 1, 2021, free movement allowed truck drivers from all over Europe, and in particular Eastern Europe, to find a job as soon as they arrived in the country.
But the new migration rules linked to the exit from the single market have come to complicate the arrival of these new drivers, the new immigration formalities being much more complex.
Still according to figures communicated by the Road Haulage Association, 20,000 European drivers have quit their jobs in the United Kingdom due to Brexit.
"Brexit is part of the problem, as are other factors such as Covid-19", nuance with France 24 David Henig, director of the European Center for International Political Economy in Brussels.
"Some drivers have stopped driving to the UK because of the return of Brexit borders. But others have returned home because of the Covid-19 crisis."
Brexit "amplified" a shortage of personnel that already existed in this employment sector, because it fueled tensions between the United Kingdom and the European Union, analysis for his part Elvire Fabry, specialist in European economic issues at the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris.
"The UK has thus become less attractive."
"Some people have been sounding the alarm for a long time"
Under pressure, Boris Johnson's government on Saturday announced plans to temporarily relax visa rules for foreign truck drivers.
He thus wishes to issue them, in the short term, up to 5,000 temporary visas.
A complete political turnaround for the Prime Minister, who until then categorically refused to turn to immigration.
Since the Brexit vote in 2016, he has repeatedly insisted on the need to end the country's dependence on foreign labor.
To do this, its objective is to put in place a policy aimed at increasing the wages of the local workforce.
"This crisis is also the result of wages that have been too low in the sector for several years," Grant Schapps admitted on Friday, refusing, however, to recognize the role of Brexit.
"Creating sufficiently attractive conditions to develop a sufficient local workforce takes time and requires a lot of investment", reacts Elvire Fabry.
"The speed at which Brexit has been put in place is clearly a problem," says Jacob Kirkegaard.
"Some people have been sounding the alarm for a long time, warning that there will not be time to train all the truck drivers needed. Pandemic or not."
And to conclude: "If Brexit were to have any meaning, it was to bring about a paradigm shift in the economic model. However, to completely and profoundly change it, it will take years."
Article translated from English by Cyrielle Cabot. The original can be read here.
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