To continue reading please register or login to your OHW+ account.
A national strike by hauliers could bring the UK to a standstill within days, according to research published this week.
Heriot Watt University's logistics research centre calculated that shops would introduce food rationing within three days of a stoppage and without deliveries many companies would go out of business.
The report also says within a week of a strike many hospitals would have to cancel operations, pubs would run out of beer and petrol pumps would run dry. It also predicts manufacturers, construction firms and retailers would begin to make people redundant to cope with cashflow problems.
The research was commissioned to coincide with National Truck Week.
However, the British Retail Consortium called the report "panic-mongering".
