A major French port goes on strike so often that the UK has come up with a procedure called 'Operation Stack' for all the trucks that get backed up on the highway

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Lorries as far as the eye can see.

• French port workers strike so often in England that the British government has had to launch a truck parking scheme called "Operation Stack."
• Operation Stack keeps British truckers lined up to enter France via underwater tunnel.
• Brexit will likely intensify the need for Operation Stack as lines will stretch even longer to enter or exit the European Union.
• A new procedure, devised to address the post-Brexit world, has been christened "Operation Brock."

The UK economy took a hit of £250 million ($328 million) a day for about 24 days one summer in 2015. British coastguards were sent out in droves with bottles of water and emergency meals. One official called the situation "absolute mayhem."

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The cause: a massive traffic jam in the southwest of England. Trucks carrying goods to continental Europe couldn't cross under the English Channel to the French port city of Calais. Up to 9,000 trucks - or lorries, as the Brits call them - were parked on England's M20 motorway for 24 days in the summer of 2015.

While the summer of 2015 was a particularly bad back-up in England, strikes that shut down Calais (and thus, the rest of Europe) to England are common. France as a whole has an incredibly robust "strike culture." Each year, 171 days of work are missed per 1,000 employees in France, the second biggest in Europe. (In Germany, just 12 days per year are missed.)

"It's part of the character of France to have these big social movements at a national level, that can last a long time," French historian Stéphane Sirot told English-language French news outlet The Local.

And that tendency to strike is highly evident in Calais. Strikes affecting the port city are so common, in fact, that the southwest county of Kent, where these truck back-ups happen, has created a parking scheme called "Operation Stack" to accommodate those trucks.

It's been enacted more than 100 times since 1997, most recently in May 2018. Operation Stack has also been deployed in times of inclement weather, fires, or industrial action on the UK side.

Read more: A British truck driver who's worked in the US for a decade says the biggest problem with trucking in America comes down to how drivers are paid

Operation Stack has a slightly panic-inducing name, but the procedure is simple.

According to the county website, Kent's police ensure that trucks park on both sides of M20 and line up as they wait for Calais to re-open. The middle lane remains clear for emergency vehicles. Passenger cars are re-routed to other freeways.

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Some truckers were stranded for days during the 2015 deployment of Operation Stack.

When it's enacted, people who rely on the motorway for daily work and travel get frustrated. A Conservative lawmaker said Operation Stack caused locals to feel "stranded, completely cut off in their own town."

The British Road Haulage Association's chief executive Richard Burnett once called for the French and British governments to deploy armed forces in lieu of Operation Stack.

Operation Stack meets a post-Brexit world

Operation Stack has typically come as a result of industrial action on the French side. The debacle in the summer of 2015 followed the closure of a French ferry service, which employed some 600 people.

Around 100 port workers protested at the terminal, burning tires and halting traffic entering and exiting France.

But now, the Brexit referendum will only multiply the need for Operation Stack.

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Truck drivers wait out Operation Stack in 2015.

British trucks will not be able to enter Europe if the UK and the EU cannot reach a deal on Brexit, Business Insider's Thomas Colson reported from London.

At the very least, lorries in a post-Brexit Britain would need considerably more time to enter the EU. Rather than two minutes to check a vehicle, the BBC reported it would take five to 45 minutes for customs to process trucks.

That would create, according to a council report, a semi-permanent 13-mile stretch of trucks on one of Britain's most crucial roads.

In response, the UK's Department of Transportation has created a replacement for Operation Stack: "Operation Brock." This operation will allow passenger vehicles to drive in certain sections of the freeway, rather than diverting traffic to smaller roads as Operation Stack does.