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Trucks are facing days-long delays to move goods between the U.K. and EU, as the Brexit red tape reality bites 1/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-07/brexit-becomes-truckers-nightmare-as-red-tape-ties-up-drivers?sref=yMmXm5Iy
The early damage of Brexit is happening beyond ports -- it's starting behind the border, at factory gates and collection depots. I spoke to 7 haulage firms and each painted a grim picture of how it's going 2/
Alcaline UK, which has a fleet of 145 vehicles and which moves goods to the EU, said it's had trucks stuck in Italy since Monday because the customer still hadn't provided correct transit documents 3/
Another case: an Alcaline trailer due to go to Milan was stuck in the U.K. for two days because it didn't have the right paperwork. `People don't have a clue what they're doing,' said David Zaccheo, Alcaline's operations manager 4/
`It's an absolute mess,' Zaccheo said, pointing out that freight levels are currently very low and still there are big problems. `What’s going to happen next week? We’re not even that busy at the moment' 5/
Another Alcaline anecdote: one of its drivers sat waiting for 8 hours in the Ashford inland border facility, because it hadn't been given a correct reference number by its client 6/
And another: a driver managed to clear UK customs with a load, arrive in Calais, but was then sent back on the ferry by French officials because it didn't have the right paperwork 7/
Another case - Bowker Transport, which operates out of Preston and runs freight into the EU, had a trailer of chemicals stuck on a quay in Belgium for more than two days this week, because of confusion over who was responsible for the customs clearance 8/
`It’s fire-fighting all the time at the moment,' said Jason Tiffen, international operations manager at Bowker. `Customs clearance agents are overstretched and under-resourced' 9/
Another case: JJX Logistics, which does just-in-time deliveries to the EU, said it took 6 hours to load a shipment of pharmaceuticals to Germany this week, at least 3x longer than usual, because of incorrect paperwork 10/
`It’s a nightmare,' said JJX accounts manager Ellis Blackham. `It starts right from the top and goes all the way down, the level of confusion' 11/
Another from JJX: a customer sent them a pallet of manufactured goods to go to France, but didn't provide any accompanying documents, because they didn't think anything needed to be done differently 12/
Another freight forwarder, which obtains customs documents for clients, said it's been havoc. There are problems getting the right commodity codes to fill in the declarations, and it's taking far longer than expected to complete basic declarations 13/
As one logistics source put it: Britain is suddenly having to put customs paperwork on all of its fast-moving, cross-channel trade with the EU, overnight. And the system is already creaking 14/
Another warning shot this week - the Customs Clearance Consortium, which is helping run the government's trader support service, said there is a `huge shortage' of customs agents 15/
`The first few days of the new rules have been very tough,” said Robert Hardy in a note, the consortium’s co-founder. `There are so many new processes and a massively steep learning curve' 16/
The bottom line from each of the haulage firms was that they were very worried about the coming weeks. If it's this bad now, they said, during the quiet early days of January, then it could get messy fast... ends/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-07/brexit-becomes-truckers-nightmare-as-red-tape-ties-up-drivers?sref=yMmXm5Iy
