Barry Davies, a lorry driver from Manchester, needs to keep moving forwards. Idling at the lights? Barely tolerable. Reversing? Never. At 46, driving has cost him many relationships. He ticks them off as we rumble along the outside lane of the M6 heading southbound. He had three children with his first girlfriend, then she left because he was away too much. It was the same story with the second, with whom he had three more kids. A third moved over from France then disappeared one day with all the furniture. “Still no idea where she is,” he told me. “It’s one of life’s great mysteries.”

He married his fourth girlfriend, but never stopped trucking. When her health took a downturn – she had type-1 diabetes and then started drinking too much – Davies, as always, was out on the road. Fortnightly runs to Portugal and back. Long haul. Sleeping in the cabin of the wagon. Tramping, they call it.

She died while he was in Spain. He had only himself for comfort but he had to keep his head together to get home in one piece. If he abandoned his truck, it might have been stolen or hauled away by the time he got back. “It was the hardest, loneliest drive I’ve ever done,” he said. “All you’ve got is your own thoughts and a shitload of whys, what ifs and what could I have done about it. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.”

Relationships five and six didn’t last; he was away too much. He was older and wiser when he paired up with his seventh girlfriend, Amanda, or Manda, as everyone knows her. Perhaps that’s why they’re still together now seven years on. “She understands the job,” he said. “He’s off his head,” she told me the next day when I stopped by her sandwich shop, Manda’s Baps, in Droylsden, a town near Manchester. “To be honest with you, I don’t think I could cope with him seven days a week.”

Barry Davies was 11 years old when he got “diesel in his blood”

Davies has a warm smile, buzz-cut brown hair, a dimple in his chin and stubble that sprouts through the day. He has been a lorry driver for 26 years. He pilots heavy-goods vehicles (HGVs) for Transflora, which distributes plants and other products throughout Britain and northern Europe. Most of the time he carts gardening supplies to nurseries and supermarkets, but really he could be transporting anything. His granddad was a trucker. So was his dad after leaving the army. His uncle was a trucker too, and his brothers.

He has been a wanderer all his life, though not always by choice. Davies’s family lived at army bases in Britain and Germany. “I never settled and I never really had any proper friends,” he said. “Because we were always moving around.” At least in lorries he had company. He used to spend summer holidays on the road, accompanying his grandad on deliveries. He was 11 when he got “diesel in his blood”. That was also when his parents’ relationship broke down and Davies, the eldest of five, had to move into a children’s home.

Four years in the care system left him determined to get out of the “street-life crap” and to make something of himself. He followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Royal Artillery at 16 but, fed up and bored, he soon quit the army and got his HGV licence: “The thing about trucking is that you’re the master of your own destiny.”

Every day, drivers like Davies forfeit comfort – and relationships – to keep the rest of us stocked and supplied. Most products spend time on a truck. Avocados. Medicine. Bricks. As Davies puts it, “we wouldn’t even have trucks without trucks”.

Though we rely on lorry drivers, we’re running out of them. Brexit and the pandemic have exacerbated an existing deficit. Over the past year the number of drivers in Britain has fallen from 305,000 to 235,000, according to the Office for National Statistics. The Road Haulage Association, an industry body, says the country now needs 100,000 more drivers to keep the economy in motion.

“We wouldn’t even have trucks without trucks”

When covid shut everything down, many of the drivers from Europe who had helped make up the shortfall returned home. More did the same after Britain left the European Union. Davies was friends with many of them, and was gutted to see them go, but he still voted Leave. He has no regrets about it now. As he saw it, foreign haulage companies operating in Britain were driving wages down and undermining smaller British hauliers. “My life, my bread and butter, my blood is in our transport industry,” he said.

But Davies blames tax reform for really doing in the industry. Some lorry drivers, like Davies, are employed on a permanent contract with one company. Others prefer the flexibility and financial benefits of freelancing for any number of firms via an agency. Until April, those drivers could set themselves up as a limited company, paying themselves in dividends to lower their tax bills. When the government closed that loophole, thousands of British and European drivers in effect received a pay-cut.

It led many British drivers to quit and provided another reason for European drivers to seek work elsewhere. Britain isn’t the only country suffering a driver shortage and wages are rising across continental Europe. When Davies spoke to Polish friends about the government’s new plans to make it easier for European lorry drivers to work in Britain, they told him it was pointless. “They won’t be coming back,” he said. “They won’t be earning the money they used to.”

We meet on a Wednesday morning in September. Davies is just starting his shift at a lay-by in Lymm, Cheshire. He usually begins his day around 6am and gets by on coffee until lunchtime. He’s already been driving for seven days and, after a 24-hour break, is preparing for another seven. He’ll do another seven after that before he heads home for a four-day rest.

Until then his digs are a white DAF XF, a popular model of lorry made in the Netherlands, which contains everything Davies needs for a life on the road: fridge, camp stove, food. A bed is neatly made up with blue-and-white-checked linen behind the front bank of seats. Resting against the windscreen, framed by velvet tassels, is a novelty Hells Bells licence plate – a tribute to the rock band AC/DC – and mini souvenir flags from Italy and France.

The lorry is parked outside Davies’s favourite pub, Ye Olde No 3, which stands on an old cart route. We’ll return there in the evening, or perhaps not. Davies has control of the truck; the world outside is anarchy. “We’re never in a rush,” he says, “Because it always goes tits up anyway.”

Before we leave the lay-by Davies performs his usual walkaround of the vehicle. Checks done, the engine roars and we roll out. First stop is a depot in Runcorn, which is only 15 miles away but takes an hour to reach – in Britain HGVs are limited to 56mph. Above Davies’s head is a tachometer, an instrument much like a black box on an airplane, which tracks his speed, distance and rest times. Government rules require him to take a 45-minute break every four-and-a-half hours and he can work a maximum of 56 hours a week and 90 in a fortnight.

Sometimes it’s 150 drivers to two showers

If drivers run too close to the clock or get stuck in traffic, they have no choice but to take their break wherever they are (however dreadful the location) or risk steep fines. Davies considers himself lucky – his company is a good employer and his gaffer, George, is a sympathetic former driver. But when this lack of flexibility clashes with pressure from a manager to complete a delivery, drivers can be left high and dry.

The Runcorn depot is a huge warehouse stuffed with trailers backed into it one next to another. Davies disappears into a doorway to do the paperwork. The trailer is removed and as the cables are pulled out – electrics, airline and braking systems – it hisses like a dragon as it’s yanked off its life support.

We dock onto a new trailer that has a Butterkist popcorn logo on the side and is full of Johnson & Johnson products. “Twenty-six tonnes of Listerine mouthwash,” Davies says. “That’ll make people happy.” He has delivered stone buddhas, giant papier-mâché dinosaurs and propellers for wind farms. He brought steel girders into London to build the Shard. When he visits the capital he looks at the skyline and thinks, “there’s a bit of me in that”. It gives him a boost.

We rejoin the motorway and gather speed: “Rock and roll!” Davies hasn’t eaten breakfast yet but when lunchtime approaches the truck stop is full. Stomachs rumbling, we drive on to the next one in Rugby, a market town in Warwickshire. Davies is impressed by the sparkling facilities and range of restaurants – it beats the smorgasbord of fast food you get in most service stations. As he tries out a hoisin-duck wrap from Pret (“great”), a friend and fellow driver, Andrew Tustian, calls with bad news. A driver they both knew just dropped dead from a heart attack, right in the yard. A big lad, his nickname was Picnic. “Andy says they tried to jump start him,” says Davies, “but they couldn’t get him going.”

He’s delivered stone buddhas, giant papier-mâché dinosaurs and wind-farm propellers

Gallows humour gets drivers through the day – lorry driving is dangerous work. Davies’s brother, Brian, was crushed by a stack of pallets while loading his truck on a slope. He was stuck there for over an hour and nearly died. He still walks with a stick and has been suicidal, but never received compensation because the firm didn’t take responsibility for the accident.

The day before I joined Davies on the road, a lorry driver in his 60s died on the northbound carriageway of the M6 when his truck ploughed into a railway bridge. Screens were put up to conceal the horror but up high in the cabin of their vehicles, HGV drivers “had a bird’s eye view”. “We were sitting in traffic talking about it,” says Davies. “It brings it home, but you bury it.” Tustian and Davies are in the early stages of setting up a charity, Globe Truckers, to support people in the transport industry who are suffering from illness, disability or tragedy. For every year he’s been on the road, Davies can count a lorry driver he knows who has died on the job.

Even if you manage to avoid suffering serious injury, lorry driving leaves an imprint on your body and mind. Davies has a smooth round lump on his right thumb, the consequence of the deep vibrations that judder through the steering wheel. He’s had back problems too: the human body isn’t designed for such sedentary labour. Davies came closest to quitting some years ago, dealing with memories from his time in care and felt alone with his demons.

In some ways trucking is lonelier than ever. Drivers will still put the world to rights over a cup of tea, filling up their petrol, loading at the depots, but everyone seems to be in a rush now. Under pressure. People spend a lot more time on their phones too. Normally by week two on the road Davies has cabin fever.

But there’s camaraderie online, especially on TikTok, home to a subculture of logistics workers. Drivers review truck stops and grumble about facilities or rail at the government. Mainly they gossip about the strange, secret world they occupy, sharing tales of bizarre encounters and photos of spectacular sunsets. Davies’s handle is @BazzinWazzin10.4. He tries to keep it PG. Trucker memes include an HGV loaded up with loo roll with a rear gunner on the back (a lot of drivers are ex-army). Another depicts a grey-haired, wizened old man anxiously smoking a cigarette with the words: “Who says trucking is stressful? I’m 34 and feel great.”

The average age of a British HGV driver is 50; in the next five years a third of them may retire. Young people don’t want to be lorry drivers. Davies hoped that one of his sons might follow him into the trade, and has taken one of them in his cab as his grandad once did with him (most companies won’t let you do this anymore). He has fond memories of running deliveries to the Balkans with his own father during the Bosnian war. They stopped for a toilet break and his dad snuck into some bushes to go to the loo. Only afterwards did they spot a sign indicating they were in a minefield. “Well, you can only die once,” his dad said, shrugging.

When he drives past that lay-by now it gives him a shudder

Davies’s sons have no interest in keeping the family’s lorry-driving heritage alive. The cost of getting an HGV licence is off-putting and the pay gap between lorry drivers and retail workers has narrowed over the past decade; fewer people are willing to sacrifice the gruelling, unpredictable hours when you can get more amenable work. Many people hold a HGV licence but are not using it. “To do a job like this and have a proper relationship with your family is virtually impossible,” says Davies, who doesn’t have much of a relationship with his children. “I think that’s what puts younger people off.”

Two generations ago – a time before power-steering and GPS – lorry driving was even harder and more perilous. It was respected, though. Davies feels like the public doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep Britain stocked with goods day in, day out. People will come out of a shop where they’ve bought milk and tell the truck driver who’s just delivered it: “You can’t park there.”

During the pandemic he hoped that people would stop taking things for granted. They saw supermarket shelves empty of flour and loo rolls for the first time in their lives. Many drivers took furlough but Davies saw it as his duty to keep driving. His grandad’s words echoed in his ears: “If you get out on the road you’ll never be out of work.” He delivered PPE and antibacterial soap to hospitals.

In the first lockdown he navigated a surreal landscape of empty roads dotted with emboldened animals acting “like they owned the place”. He once awoke in a lay-by in Scotland surrounded by deer: “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Then Davies got covid and had to isolate in his truck, in a lay-by, for ten days. He spent that time feverish in his cabin, helped by a stranger who knocked on his door and brought him supplies. “You’ll be alright,” Manda told him when he called. “What’s the worst that can happen?” Davies replied: “I die?” He laughs, but when he drives past that lay-by now it gives him a shudder.

Cheaper licences might help people join the trade, reckons Davies, but the facilities are a bigger problem. There can be 150 drivers to two showers. Sometimes lorry drivers aren’t allowed to use them at all. “You’re treated worse than dogs on the road,” he says. “All we want is decent shower facilities and a healthy meal.”

“It makes me smile, seeing people buying stuff and knowing I’ve played a part in it”

Many truck stops are in poor condition and the location of the nightly layover can be dictated by circumstances out of your control. Getting home – or anywhere near it – is often like chasing rainbows. Trampers have to be prepared for anything. There’s a technique drivers have that converts the passenger seat into a makeshift toilet: lay out a plastic bag, pop the armrest down and squat. “Practice makes perfect,” says Davies. “But you can’t just drop one on the pavement...what would society think of us then?”

The driver shortage is finally pushing up wages in Britain (at some companies this merely compensates for the income tax and national-insurance contributions drivers make now that they’re on the payroll instead of freelance). At his previous job Davies earned £600 ($820) a week after tax, working five nights a week and Saturday mornings. Today he can pull in more than double that, though he’s at the high end of the pay scale. Haulage companies are also offering cash incentives for drivers to join and the government has promised to improve truck stops. But it could take years – a generation, thinks Davies – to plug the gap. Few people want to become lorry drivers. Even fewer want to become trampers. As Davies says: “It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle.”

The next stop is a depot in Daventry, Northamptonshire. Unloading takes an hour and a half. Davies’s mood flattens. He’s itching to drive. Recently, he waited at this depot for seven hours. On another occasion it was five. It’s a scorching hot day and the concrete yard is a torturous sun trap. A buzzard flies overhead. We sit in the cabin with the aircon on while a forklift truck rummages around in the trailer.

Davies tells me that before he decided to become a trucker he wanted to be a geologist – he loved archaeology and Indiana Jones films. In his spare time he goes gold panning in Cumbria. He likes the thrill of the chase. When it’s finally time to depart Davies is elated. “We’re free!” As we pass the gate attendant he cries, “see you tomorrow!” We head to another depot, in Warwickshire, and pick up 16 pallets of salted crisps. It’s our final load but when we arrive at the drop-off at Brownhills, a town near Walsall in the West Midlands, the forklift driver goes on his 45-minute break. The energy plummets.

At last, the crisps are delivered. We’re on the home run. “We’re done, let’s get out of this prison!” Light fading, music on, Davies steers north to the strum of trucking classics; “Hit the Road Jack”; “I’ve Been Everywhere Man”; “Eastbound and Down”; “Convoy”. The M6 is still jammed by the ongoing clean-up from yesterday’s fatal crash, so Davies peels off at a junction, the new route already written in his mind. Hurtling down a dark road we overtake a BMW convertible. “On the Road Again” is playing on the stereo. “Adios amigo!” says Davies. Metal, blues, jazz keep him going but he’s been experimenting with ambient music. Sometimes at night he puts on a chillout mix and places a scented candle on the dashboard. Occasionally a bat hits the windscreen. Once his truck hit an owl.

Ye Olde No 3 beckons and Davies is excited again. He’s completed his mission, survived another day. It has come at the expense of family, relationships and a stable life, but trucking is something Davies knows he will always want to do. Even with all the rules and regulations, he has more freedom than in most jobs. I ask if that freedom is also a means to avoid challenges at home. He nods. “Trucking has given me an out to facing up to normal life,” he says. “But what is normal life? I wouldn’t know it if it hit me in the face.”

As a kid in care, Davies felt worthless; this job, he says, has given him meaning. When he’s in town at weekends he likes to watch people with ordinary lives, browsing in shops, making purchases, enjoying themselves. “It makes me smile,” he says. “Seeing people buying stuff and knowing I’ve played a part in it. I just like to observe the happiness.” ■

Will Coldwell is a freelance writer and former acting digital editor of 1843 magazine

Photographs: Zed Nelson