Mobilities, mobile work and habitation: truck drivers and the crisis in occupational auto-mobility in the UK

Abstract

This paper examines the relation between mobilities and mobile work through a focus on occupational auto-mobility and habitation. Drawing on qualitative research conducted on truck drivers/driving in South-east England, it shows habitation emerges when driving stops; that it is cab-based dwelling-in-transit and nomadic dwelling rooted in and bounded by the material culture of the cab; and that it is displaced to the margins and interstices of the road and logistical network. The paper highlights the discomfort of cab-based habitation and its limits, in sanitation, and examines how recent developments at distribution centres intensify discomfort by denying cab-based habitation. These developments recast the relation of occupational auto-mobility and habitation through transient dwelling and are key to understanding the current crisis in labour supply in truck driving.

Keywords:

• Cargo mobilities
• logistics
• distribution
• dwelling
• truck driving
• sanitation

Acknowledgements

Thanks to two anonymous referees and to the editors for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version. Above all, thanks to the drivers who showed a passenger what life on the road is really like.

Notes

1. Large Goods Vehicle – a term used interchangeably with HGV, or heavy goods vehicle.

2. A full description of the yard, drivers and methods is given in the companion paper (Gregson 2017).

3. This is a key distinction from the situation in continental Europe where dedicated truck service areas and over-night facilities are a feature of the road network.

4. All this convenience food is a world away from Nóvoa’s Portuguese drivers and their fresh Mediterranean food on-the-move, and speaks to the coexistence of different culinary cultures on the road.

5. Tracing the genealogy of these changes is beyond the scope of the paper. In broad terms, their introduction reflects the intersection between discourses of health and safety and security. At the level of drivers and DC staff, the changes are narrated through health and safety rules and regulations, and explained in terms of circulating myths of DC-forklift-truck drivers being injured as a result of a truck driver pulling off a bay on a red light. However, for DCs road haulage is one of the weak points in the security of the supply chain, and drivers a potential means to the theft of goods. Disciplining drivers in this way is a means to securitize the supply chain, akin to the use of biometric passes inside some port terminals (Cowen 2007).