The cost of petrol is expected to rocket, due to the price of crude oil reaching record levels, pushing up costs for bakery distributors. The price of oil recently broke through the $80 (£40) a barrel for the first time. These price increases are expected to be passed on to road users.

"As the recent financial market turbulence remains unclear," according to the Oil Market Report by the International Energy Agency, "falling stocks in August underscored higher prices."

Released on 12 September, the Oil Market Report highlighted that world oil supply fell by 430kb/d (thousand barrels a day) to 84.6mb/d in August, on North Sea and Mexican outages, plus lower Iraqi exports. And while concerns that a fresh wave of hurricanes could hit American oil installations, demand is rising sharply in China and India, the world’s fastest-growing energy markets. These factors are adding to the uncertainty of future petrol and energy pricing.

Despite this current pricing environment, the government’s Commission for Integrated Transport’s (CfIT), said that if it put up the price of petrol in the UK, this would help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. James Hookham, MD of policy and communications at the Freight Transport Association (FTA), said in response: "The FTA has long argued that escalating fuel duty robs smaller businesses of much-needed cash to invest in efficiency measures."

The FTA argued that rising world oil prices already influenced road user behaviour and said that the logistics sector had already been focusing on carbon dioxide reduction and improvements to operational efficiency.