Just about everything in your home - or in your nearest Amazon warehouse - gets there by truck.
Lorry drivers keep the country going.
There is currently a shortage of around 100,000 lorry drivers in the UK - a statistic not lost on Rochdale haulier James Nuttall (Transport) Ltd.
This is despite the average trucker earning an average of £30,000-plus a year - £40,000-plus in some cases.
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Family-run James Nuttall, run by the son of the company's late founder of the same name 45 years ago, has already upped pay at least once in order to retain its drivers and - equally as important - attract new blood.
James, 51, who entered his dad's business 30 years ago as a free-spirited 21-year-old with a love of the open road, said: "Us and others in the industry have increased the pay, twice, sometimes three times in some cases to hold on to drivers and get others in.
"We also try to buy the best vehicles we can put on the road. They've got fridges and microwaves.
"Our drivers here know that the vehicles are fully roadworthy and compliant with the regulations at all times.
"Hauliers locally are dealing with the same pool of drivers all the time, often poaching them from each other, which underlines the fact that we need some new people coming into the industry.
"Before the pandemic, there was already a shortage of 60,000 drivers, and that's now gone up to 100,000.
"A lot of this is down to the fact migrant drivers from places like Poland and Romania have gone home."
James' firm, based at Royle Barns Road, Castleton, currently employs 60 drivers and has vacancies for eight more. The company operates 55 lorries which are renewed every five to seven years.
But here's another problem for the industry.
The big truck manufacturers like Scania and Volvo have closed their order books until 2022 because they can't make vehicles fast enough due to a worldwide shortage of microchips - similar to the problem dogging the car industry.
"There's a shortage of everything," explained James.
"This includes steel, timber, and our tyre supplier is struggling to get new tyres.
But it's the absence of drivers which is causing the biggest concern.
"The average age of our drivers is 55, so we need younger people coming into the lorry driving business.
"I drove a truck for four years when I came into the business run by my dad 30 years ago. I was 21 and really enjoyed it. You are a free spirit and it's an adventure, but I wouldn't like to do it now.
"The time to do it is when you're younger and you haven't got a wife and children. A lot of our drivers worry about their grandchildren at the weekend, not their children, so we've skipped a generation."
James reckons one way to attract new drivers into the business is to improve working conditions for drivers and for the government to help finance training. And HGV testing needs to be stepped up to clear the backlog caused by the pandemic.
He continued: "It's well-known the services aren't nice. The facilities for showering are poor and it's difficult to get a good value meal. And they are charging a lot now for parking an HGV.
"We need to encourage new talent and new training programmes and improve working conditions for drivers all round.
"There is a call in our industry for the government to classify HGV drivers in the UK’s Shortage Occupation List (which means prospective lorry drivers can circumvent the current UK immigration laws), which I agree with."
And thus there is the thorny question of Brexit, the impact of which has been blurred by the pandemic.
James said: "Brexit has been a big contributory factor to the driver shortage and of raw materials for the building industry, without a doubt. And I don't think we've felt the impact of what Brexit has done yet. I don't think we will until things calm down after the pandemic."
But James, who runs the company alongside his wife Kathryn and sister Jane and whose 26-year-old nephew George Cole is a lorry driver, says the company is proud of the 'family feel' among the drivers and is looking forward with optimism.
He said: "The situation for us is that someone with all the qualifications can come here and they find out they have better conditions, we look after them better, and we know everybody's name. They get a bit of a family feel.
"The longest-serving driver we've got - apart from me - has been here 25 years and we've got a few who have been here 22 years.
"One of my late dad's favourite expressions was 'you can't send a loaf of bread down a telephone wire', and he was absolutely right."
