Did you mean "cabotage" or "sabotage" ?
For me "cabotage" means basically sailing without losing sight of the shore (so it needs no navigation or very primitive).
And I kind of can't wrap my mind around milk being delivered by boat along the shores, and boats somehow having petrol while cars don't...
Given that this is Absurdism Corner, I was trying to make a very much tongue-in-cheek comment, taking the piss out of the current situation.
But to try and provide a more serious explanation, as far as I understand, cabotage applies to multiple forms of goods transport. With regard to HGVs specifically, I believe it permitted drivers to transport goods from France to England, then pick up a load for delivery to Scotland, then return with another load to Belgium (for example).
Brexshitters love to say “it’s not just the UK that has HGV driver shortages; the EU does too!” And yes, they’re right. But there have been shortages for a couple of decades and such an excuse doesn’t explain why many supermarket shelves - including milk - across the UK are now consistently empty (with industry chiefs explaining that we’re now past the point of no return on avoiding shortages) whilst you just don’t see this issue in the EU.
There are multiple reasons for this, including that there has been some panic buying (but then you would expect shelves to be replenished after the panic buying’s over, which hasn’t happened), the industry’s structural practices to which Westminster has turned a blind eye over many years, and a bunch of British HGV title holders’ licenses coming up for renewal with a severely understaffed DVLA (thanks to Westminster’s criminally negligent approach to Covid-19 policy, particularly in the workplace)...but Brexshit has really thrown a spanner in the works.
It’s bad enough that there’s now increased overhead costs of time and money (delays at the borders, extra paperwork, visa requirements etc. - read: barriers to trade) but the level of supremacist racism exhibited by the English exceptionalist Home Office treating some non-British HGV drivers the way the HO/Border Force also illegally treats many asylum seekers, along with the doubled risk of having to return from the UK to the EU with an empty HGV*, simply means that many non-British drivers (and their employers) just don’t want to service the UK market**. And even without the racist abuse, why would they want to when even so many British HGV title holders don’t wish to take the job back up either because the working conditions in the industry have so deteriorated for years, yet at least on the continent roadside stops are generally far better designed for HGV drivers. There is *at least* anecdotal evidence that many employees on the continent are begging their employers to put them on routes that specifically avoid the UK.
So all of that (and no doubt further factors of which I’m ignorant) means that even in just the UK’s internal market, there simply aren’t enough loads being picked up and deliveries made so even if UK farmers could get enough staff to avoid produce spoiling in the fields (which they can’t - though I imagine that’s not quite as much of an issue for milk or fuel), they’re really struggling to get their produce to the supermarkets and forecourts (which is an issue for milk and fuel).
*because of reduced cabotage permissions in the Trade & Cooperation Agreement thanks to the UK becoming a 3rd country.
**with the probable exception of Northern Ireland, via the Republic of Ireland.
Unless those autonomous lorries run out of fuel too...
