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Demand for transport is so high it has caused a “vicious circle” of soaring prices for harder-to-obtain haulage services – and customers are waiting up to three times longer to receive their orders.

The Daily Express was told some truckers queued for up to seven hours to collect containers full of imported goods from Felixstowe, Suffolk.

China will celebrate its new year on February 1, but it will be several weeks before the pause in shipping caused by the shutdown eases pressure on supply chains.

A shortage of HGV drivers has also hit deliveries of food to supermarkets, which has led to shelves being stripped bare by shoppers.

Firms desperate to receive goods are already snapping up delivery slots for the middle of next month – previously they would have wanted orders to turn up in just a week or two.

Matt Smith, director of Coastal Global Services based yards from Felixstowe Port, said: “I don’t see any change at all until, at best, the end of February, beginning of March because that’s what we call in the industry Chinese new year.

“In China, there is a two-week period where they shut down for new year. So, four to six weeks on from that, we feel the effects of that two-week shutdown.

“It creates a sort of pause in demand. In previous years, as a haulier you always worry about that two weeks because you know it’s going to be really, really quiet.

“A lot of these problems have always been there… they are just amplified at the moment. I would love to see this congestion issue get resolved.

“It is a vicious circle. Everyone has got their problems. I don’t want to sit here and point the finger and say it is all their fault.

“It can’t keep carrying on with the spiralling out-ofcontrol prices.”

Bosses at Felixstowe, which handles 36 per cent of the UK’s freight container traffic, put the blame on a busy pre-Christmas period and haulage shortages.

Shipping giant Maersk diverted container carriers from Felixstowe as a backlog of uncollected goods built up on the dockside and drivers struggled to find space where they could leave “empties”. Other vessels have been unable or unwilling to enter ports to pick them up for reuse.

Describing the impact on his business, Mr Smith said: “I’ve never had it before, where a customer wants something next week or the week after and I say, ‘Look, I don’t have anything until mid- November’ and they go ‘OK, that’s no problem’. Our wait times have doubled, if not trebled, but people understand. When someone can’t necessarily get what they want when they want it, offering more money is something that makes it more attractive – and maybe some people will try to do more.

“But the costs for our businesses have gone up dramatically.

Escalate “We have had three rounds of negotiations on pay increases just to try to keep the staff.

“We’ve gone to our customer base and said, ‘Look, we need to react to this’ and we’ve included a driver-retention surcharge.

“It’s no different to when the fuel prices escalate and the prices go up at the pumps.” Mr Smith said clients can reject a delivery if goods are an hour late – heaping further costs on hauliers.

“What we are saying now to customers, because of what is going on is, ‘If we are doing a job at this rate, you need to be flexible’ and that ‘You will be charged’. And because they need it so much, they say ‘Yeah, that’s fine’. There are so many areas that can cost you a fortune through no fault of your own. I’m not getting customers screaming down the phone because they’d be wasting their breath.

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“Problems are well-known. There is a driver shortage. Demand is high and you haven’t got the resources to cover it. So things are stacking up and stacking up.

“Everything is taking longer and it just contributes to delays, delays and delays.

“When we pick up a container, 99 times out of a hundred you have to return it where you picked it up. But what firms are saying now is they don’t have anywhere [free]: ‘You can’t bring that box back’.

“And then, we’ll go to the shipping company and say ‘Where can we take this box?’

“At the moment, this problem is quite severe. A lot of vehicles have been diverted to London Gateway but that is nearly full. They are waiting to get vessels in to load these empties to make space again.

“So our lorries are being diverted somewhere else to get rid of their box before coming back again and that can take hours.

“There are port delays – horrendous port delays.”

The British Ports Association has said supply chain backlogs mean its members are dealing with high volumes of cargo.

And the knock-on effects to other ports are visible, such as long lines of Amazon Prime vans awaiting onward delivery at Sheerness in Kent.

Truckers confirmed the big problem is dropping off emptied containers. Darren Gleave, 47, added: “The entire system is outdated. People are waiting a lot longer at the moment. Booking slots are harder to get.”

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