Juddian:
Decent honest answer that Peter if i may say so, and you do have a vested interest to keep the trainees coming, so doubly impressed with your candid post 
, i especially agree with not getting into debt, and that applies to everything except buying the roof over your head.
The problem with food deliveries is that the way it works is likely to change drastically, i doubt the catering industry will recover for a long time particularly as one climbs the scales to restaurants, many of which will never re-open, and whilst i agree people will need to spend to kick start the economy, if millions have lost their jobs and/or find themselves on largely reduced incomes there literally won’t be the money to go round, plus those already off work in the private sector might have been having a 20% cut in take home pay (plus no subsistence payments for trampers) for several weeks already.
Food work involving the staple foodstuffs, yes, and i include supermarkets here.
Lots of people will have found they have cut costs considerably, no pubs, no cafes, baking at home, able to take alternative exercise so no gym membership costs, that new car costing £300 a month suddenly isn’t as important as once it was…yes i’m looking at things from a glass half full perspective, but, i’ve been around a long time and seen what can happen when living lifestyles right up to the limit of their pay and beyond can put people when the crap suddenly hits the fan, i suspect millions of people in their twenties and thirties who haven’t lived as responsible adults through serious downturns before are suddenly seeing things in a new light, whether they will return to being good little consumers living on endless credit the day lockdown ends remains to be seem.
Excellent 2 posts Juddian, I completely agree with both. The reality of the situation hasn’t dawned on the sheeple yet. They’ve had a good 5/6 weeks sunning themselves whilst being on (mostly) full pay until this virus thing “blows over” and then “we can get back to normal”. They don’t have a clue about the economy and how it functions. They assume that the government is paying for it all and so everything is gucci. They don’t realise that this is the ‘new normal’ and the ‘old normal’ isn’t coming back. A significant number of them won’t even have jobs to go back to, and that includes many transport firms operating in certain sectors which have been decimated. At the very minimum there will be large scale lay-offs as there are far far too many drivers and trucks for the now (comparatively) small amount of haulage work required.
It will recover eventually I think, but again, I’m in complete agreement that the timescale is extremely likely to be years away, certainly not months. Several economists have said that we should expect things to get far worse over the next couple of years with no plans for a possible recovery until into 2022/3. Wasn’t there a thread on here recently about 50%(?) of the entire UKs haulage fleets were currently mothballed? That is an absolute crap-ton of capacity - tens of thousands of drivers and thousands of trucks, and a decent amount of those won’t be going back to work again.
I don’t even think the real pain has begun yet. Currently, the only people in the industry affected from a driver standpoint have been agency men on ZHCs or non-guaranteed contracts. Virtually all these seem to be sat at home with no money coming in. The occasional full-time permie job ads that get posted are swamped with thousands of applications so little chance of even getting a reply. The agency ads are just the usual book-padding exercise “it’s a bit quiet at the moment but we expect it to pick up in a few weeks so keep your phone switched on” ie. we don’t have any of the work we’re advertising.
Hardly anyone is spending anything because those with their heads screwed on can see the uncertainty looming in the economy and will be starting to have worries about their job. The furlough money will end once the lockdown is lifted and then companies will have tough decisions to make. Restaurants and bars aren’t financially viable at 25% capacity due to social distancing requirements so they won’t be reopening. Same goes for any business that relies on people being in close proximity to make money, eg, airlines. All these people know they are highly likely to be laid off at some point in the near future so there’s no way they’re going to be out spending money in the economy. Bricks and mortar retail is finished because virtually no-one is going to queue up in a long conga line for 30-60 minutes outside a shop just to go and browse what’s available. It’s only being tolerated at supermarkets because delivery slots are booked up months in advance and there’s no other option to get your food.
As for driver training for your HGV licence(s) - sure, go ahead if you want to have the letters on your card, but in the current climate it’s money down the drain as there’s barely any work for time-served, experienced drivers so no chance of anything for newbies with no experience. 
That’s the stark reality of it. Some training companies have connections with local hauliers to place newbies there once passed so if you can find such a company offering that with hard guarantees then you should be okay, but if not then you’re on your own and the £3000-3500 you’ve just paid is on its 5 year countdown with nothing coming in to pay it off.
