What is happening is that overseas drivers are spending more time in the UK before returning home. This is proving more profitable than just doing inbound to the UK and then returning empty - which is the current norm.
They tend to be bringing in fresh fruit and veg, so are using reefers and curtain siders. These are suitable for general haulage, so they can move everything from car parts to chocolate bars around the country for a couple of weeks before hopping back on the ferry home.
We're seeing significant interest from EU hauliers, as UK rates for shipments have jumped up. Even the Irish guys are looking to come over for a bit of the action!
Even if the above scenario turns out to be correct, I cannot see any medium or long term benefits for consumers, the UK haulage industry or British commerce in general
The British road Haulage industry has been highly efficient in the past two decades. However, that efficiency relied on a critical percentage of European Union HGV Drivers which in January this year were suddenly no longer available.
That scenario has brought about the supply chain situation Britain finds itself in now
Therefore to encourage a predicament where Brexit Britain becomes even more reliant on European Union HGV Drivers and EU registered vehicles is courting disaster for the British road haulage industry and the many thousands of companies that rely on heavy road transport for their very survival.
British Hauliers are one hundred percent responsible for the situation they find themselves in now. However, the solution is not to allow that British industry to be destroyed by EU based competition at a time when it cannot respond to that threat. It is however to rebuild and reshape British road distribution based on new regulations, in house operation of transport by the large supermarket retailers and other ancillary supply chain industries to those retailers and manufacturers.
It has been the reliance on cheap EU based HGV drivers that have produced shortages on our supermarket shelves, containers not being moved through our ports and a threat to the Christmas supply chain that means so much for Britains retailers and those that sell their products to those retailers.
The UK also has a government that was elected to "Get Brexit Done" and that government will not be allowed by Tory backbenchers to see one of Britains most essential industries to become even more dominated by the European Union.
In that, an even more unstable situation in our road transport industry may well develop than we have all witnessed over the past eight months.
Time for those who appear to be celebrating the removal of the Cabotage regulations to think again, I believe.