I thought trucking would be a blast. I would rumble around in a huge “rig”, eating Yorkies, parping the air horns chauvinistically at women motorists and chatting on CB radio to colleagues called Smokey Bear and Rubber Chicken.

Wrong. Trucking is grindingly tough. Fuel prices spiral remorselessly northward. The government keeps hiking fuel duty. And Continental operators, I am told, send across fleets of artics stuffed with cheap fuel, like squadrons of Heinkels loaded with bombs, to obliterate British competitors.