WHEN Helen Wang’s Abakus Foods was ready to ship its seaweed crisps — stocked in the likes of J Sainsbury Plc. and Asda — she called up a haulier.

Normally, a truck comes the same day to collect them from her base in northeast London. But, in recent weeks, there has been a problem: a national shortage of lorry drivers means deliveries are facing dayslong delays, and stock is piling up.

“It’s a struggle every time,” said Wang, who has had to pay 3,000 pounds (US$4,100) a month to rent extra storage space for goods that haven’t been collected. “It’s meant a lot of headache and tension.”

Her experience is one shared by many companies across Britain: a shortage of drivers, exacerbated by Brexit and COVID, is pushing up delivery costs and leading to empty shelves in stores.

It’s a sign of a much bigger structural shift in the U.K. economy after Brexit. Industries from hospitality to agriculture and health care are having to adapt to a sudden reduction in the availability of cheap labor from the bloc.

The shortage is already having ripple effects throughout the U.K. economy. Fresh fruit, vegetables and milk are going to waste due to canceled or delayed deliveries, according to Tom Bradshaw, vice president of the National Farmers’ Union. And the country’s biggest supermarkets are beginning to see gaps in their offerings due to goods not arriving at their stores.

The lack of truckers — the result of an aging workforce, the high cost of training new drivers, and the industry’s low margins — has long been a problem in Britain. But the twin effects of Brexit and COVID have brought the industry to a crisis. In 2020, there were 76,000 fewer drivers than needed, a figure that has since risen to 90,000, according to Logistics U.K., a lobby group.

“It’s close to a perfect storm,” said Ian Baxter, chairman of Baxter Freight, a Nottingham-based transport firm. (SD-Agencies)