Qualla: Operation Stack

Operation Stack: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Barry Davis, CC BY 2.0. When a ferry strike, a tunnel fire, or a midwinter storm closes the crossing between Dover and Calais, freight starts piling up - because the Port of Dover and the Channel Tunnel together handle ninety percent of the freight traffic between the United Kingdom and mainland Europe. Kent has official parking for 550 heavy goods vehicles. The trucks come in by the thousands. Where do they go? For thirty-one years, the answer was: onto the M20 motorway itself. Kent Police would shut the coast-bound carriageways and stack the lorries there, sometimes for days. The procedure was called Operation Stack. By 2007 it had been invoked 74 times in twenty years. The worst implementation, in June and July 2015, queued more than thirty miles of trucks and cost the British economy an estimated £250 million.

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Image: Barry Davis | CC BY 2.0

Operation Stack: The First Strike

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Wandering at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. Operation Stack began in February 1988 when the National Union of Seamen called a strike at Folkestone Docks, then an important ferry terminal. The strike lasted only three days, but the tailback didn't. The M20 between Ashford and Folkestone was closed - and at the time, the mot...

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Wandering at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0

Operation Stack: How It Worked

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original uploader was Xtrememachineuk at en.wikipedia, CC BY 2.5. The system had four phases, escalating with the scale of the disruption. Phase 1 closed the coast-bound M20 from Junction 11 at Hythe to Junction 12 at Cheriton - 3.6 miles. Phase 2 added Junction 8 at Maidstone to Junction 9 at Ashford - another 26.5 miles. Phase 3 split the que...

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Image: Original uploader was Xtrememachineuk at en.wikipedia | CC BY 2.5

Operation Stack: 2015: The Year of Calais

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. On 24 June 2015, French employees of MyFerryLink went on strike over the imminent takeover of their company by DFDS. The same summer brought a humanitarian crisis to the Calais ferry terminal: thousands of migrants - many of them refugees from Syria's civil war, others from Sudan...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Operation Stack: Brexit and Brock

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Linda Spashett Storye_book, CC BY 3.0. By 2018, the planning was no longer about strikes - it was about Brexit. National Highways, then called Highways England, started work in May 2018 on Operation Brock, a contraflow system designed to keep the M20 open in both directions while still being able to queue lorries safe...

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Image: Linda Spashett Storye_book | CC BY 3.0

Operation Stack: Other Coasts

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charlotte-Crofton, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk. Dover is not alone. When the Port of Felixstowe closes - which happens whenever winds exceed 45 mph because the cranes can't operate safely - lorries are stacked on the old A45 at Levington. They used to park on the A14 until that was deemed too dangerous. When the Scottish ports...

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Image: Charlotte-Crofton | CC BY-SA 2.0 uk