Highway robbery

It happens in different ways. A mate asks for a favour, maybe just a few crates of fags. A boss at the depot offers a chance to make some real money, in return for a blind eye to a package. A family of asylum seekers at a motorway service station waves a fistful of cash. And if the truck driver accepts, he becomes a smuggler.

The risks are huge, but the rewards can be huge, too. And these are desperate times for the haulage industry. A successful trip with an illegal load drugs, porn, contraband, human beings can clear debts, pay off a mortgage and save a business. An unsuccessful trip, meanwhile, may land you in prison for 20 years.

For those who cross the channel from Britain by Eurotunnel, the crunch comes at Folkestone, where a man in a luminous jacket at the security barrier picks out the 3% of trucks to be searched.

Directed to the right, you join the herd queueing for the train. To the left, you enter a concrete bay with tracks, known as the skid. Drivers step out, and their juggernaut slides towards a steel bunker which contains the pride and joy of Eurotunnel security, Britain's biggest x-ray machine.

Drivers wait alone in a bare cabin for the four minutes it takes for the vehicle to be scanned. For the guilty, there is no escape from here. Security men provide an escort to an interview room while police are called.

The truckers queueing amid throbs and diesel fumes at the security barrier on this spring night know they are on the front line of a political and law-enforcement battle. Asylum seekers rove French ports and service stations seeking entry to Britain, and hiding in a freight container is often the easiest way. The government estimates that 8,000 did so last year. Even if they are intercepted by customs, it is too late they are already in Britain.

Last December, egged on by xenophobic headlines, the Home Office announced a crackdown. Truckers would be fined ?2,000 for every asylum-seeker, far more than what they were likely to have been bribed.

There were howls of protest from the haulage industry and the Home Office was forced to climb down, but a marker was laid: no longer could truckers stroll from their cabs, watch customs seize illegal human cargoes, shrug their shoulders and say they knew nothing about it.

Nor could they say it was none of their business when sniffer dogs found illegal substances in their cargo. Jack Straw's war on drugs demands results. Now detectives put a suspect trucker's trip under the microscope: the tachograph is deconstructed; mobile phone calls traced; receipts queried. Two coffees in the same cafe? But you said you were travelling alone?

Boosted by 100 additional officers and encouraged to be more robust in using criminal prosecution powers, HM Customs' hit-rates are improving. The number of seizures rises, but that creates pressure for even greater scrutiny, heavier punishment. The courts oblige and prison populations swell.

Protests over road and diesel taxes, including today's blockade of the M25, are the symptom of an industry in pain. Some owner-drivers the one-man bands that are the backbone of Britain's haulage industry will do anything to survive. And so the vicious circle grows tighter and tighter.

Such is the pressure that truckers' traditional intolerance of smuggling is melting away, said one senior customs officer. 'They are turning opportunists. They feel that have to.' Rubbish, responds the industry. Smuggling is as despised now as it ever was.

Who is right? The fume-filled queue of behemoths waiting to board the next train to Calais seemed a reasonable place to ask the question. Dog-tired men step from cabs to stretch legs, smoke and chat. Two hundred metres ahead, the man in the luminous jacket is siphoning off those to be inspected.

On condition of anonymity, 'Steve' has agreed to give me a lift on his overnight return trip to Belgium. Is he nervous? 'Wouldn't be human if I wasn't. I trust the people I work for, but you just never know what's inside the trailer.' For Steve, every inspection that results in clearance brings him closer to the one that doesn't. 'I'm getting out of this game,' he says. 'I can't stand it anymore. The crap, the searches, the hassle. My nerves are gone.'

A three-quarter moon and harsh floodlights illuminate the 30-tonners as they inch forward. Niels, a 31-year-old Dane, chews a thumb-nail and smiles tightly. 'I pray they won't stop me. Not for the reason you think.' He wags his finger. 'I'm not carrying anything illegal. But I can't afford to miss this train.' Unforgiving deadlines render some loads worthless if they are late.

It is 10.25pm. We cannot see them, but somewhere customs and security officers are studying each truck. They are looking for the ones that fit the profile of a smuggler. More than a million lorries a year pass in and out of Britain. Decades of seizures have bequeathed an encyclopaedia of clues, which are fed into a computer that churns out continuously updated and refined profiles of likely smugglers.

No detail is too small. A truck with a crooked exhaust? Evidence of neglect; maybe the driver was too busy picking up an illegal load to fix it. Check him. An out of date tax disc? A sign of recklessness, maybe the driver likes risks. Check him. A stalled engine? Nerves, maybe. Check him.

First they run the sniffer dogs round. Their handlers open trailer doors and beam high-powered torches inside. They do not look for drugs, contraband or people. They look for space. Odd alignments of loads, unnatural arrangements, something not looking right.

Last year, customs in the south east seized 20 tons of drugs from freight alone. They also found 1,748,400 litres of spirits, 167,753,500 cigarettes, 12 tons of fireworks, 250,000 litres of beer and a quarter of a ton of porn.

Most of the individual seizures were too small to make the news. But it is the small-fry, such as Antonio Jose Bras Nunes, 31, of Forest Gate, east London, sentenced to 12 months after being caught with 76 cases of beer, who are smuggling's lifeblood.

Steve and the Dane make it onto the train without incident. They and two dozen other drivers slump into the dining car. Swaying to the rhythm of the train, they spend the next 45 minutes snoozing, spooning a greasy stew and reading the Sun.

Sitting alone, a large, red-faced Cockney drains his tea and makes a confession: 'This Kosovan guy comes up to me at a service station. Poor sod, desperate, knows fuck all, offers hundreds of pounds. Doesn't even know which way I'm going.' Did he take him? He looks around, leans forward and whispers: 'Nah. Don't need it, make all I need from beer and baccy.' Then he roars with laughter.

'That's where the money is. Beer and baccy.' A few drivers look up and smile, but say nothing. The government estimates it loses more than ?800m a year to alcohol and tobacco smugglers.

The train shoots out of the tunnel and the lights of Calais loom into view. Minutes later, the lorries are swooshing through roundabouts and over ramps with unexpected grace, dwarfing cars when they hit virtually empty motorways.

Headlights punch holes in the gloom and the flat French countryside races past to the sound of Dusty Springfield. It is midnight. 'Look, I'm no smuggler,' says Steve. 'I don't need it, I work for a big company that pays me well. But if they sacked me tomorrow, I'd quit trucking. There's no way I'd go independent. Their life is hard. Crap money, too much competition on the roads, hassle. That's why some of them crack. They smuggle to pay the bills.' A driver who rebuffs a smuggling gang's attempted recruitment has many hours alone on featureless motorways to ponder the decision, to figure how to stretch that week's earnings of ?350. Time to ponder, too, the fate of the 420 British drivers fighting smuggling charges in European jails.

Steve pulls off the A22 for Ghent in Belgium and trundles into a vast industrial estate for his 2am rendezvous. For those who have agreed to take contraband to Britain, these estates, where truckers converge to swap trailers, are where they pick it up.

The illegal cargo would usually already be loaded. Steve winds through the darkness and suddenly stops beside an 18-wheeler, his change-over. Without exchanging a word, the two drivers unhitch trailers, pirouette their rigs and hitch the new loads. They swap travel documents and the other driver heads, back to Germany. The change-over takes six minutes.

Steve studies the trailer for a moment. He has no idea what is inside. After peeing against a rear wheel, he is off, racing back to Britain. 'I don't check. I never check. Odds are I won't spot whatever might be hidden in there, but my fingerprints would be all over the place. Smarter not to check.'

Solicitors who defend truckers privately agree. Clients who can say they did not see the inside stand a better chance of convincing a jury. Such hard-nosed realism is sinking the Memorandum of Understanding between customs and the United Road Transport Union, which says that drivers found carrying drugs will not be assumed guilty without corroboration. In return, drivers are supposed to check.

Asylum seekers have provided another incentive not to check. They have learned not to give themselves away by breaking open padlocked doors. Slicing open a tarpaulin roof with a sharp knife and stitching it closed from inside works better. 'I'm not paid enough to have some frightened immigrant sinking a blade into my guts,' says Steve.

By 4.30am, Calais twinkles into view. Sixty minutes later the convoy lumbers onto English soil. There are no seizures. Just a growl of engines hurtling inland.

Innocent and guilty alike are relieved not to be stopped. For the innocent it means no delay and no nasty surprise. For the guilty it means a hefty profit and something much more valuable avoiding a dilemma.

Once caught, drivers face an agonising choice over whether to cut a deal with the authorities, says Nigel Knott, spokesman for customs in south east England. 'The people who are financing these gangs have a revenge streak. Often these organisations have no scruples and no morals. The drivers know that and quite often they'll take the rap themselves.' Which might explain why virtually an entire wing at Maidstone prison is filled with men serving time in a cell not much larger than their cabs.