The bottlenecks inherent in short sea shipping sometimes discourage high volume freight shipper from using sea. There is stiff competition from road freight suppliers, who can offer the right equipment at the right price, coupled with good transit times. During the recession, shippers are very sensitive to reliability problems, and have found that lack of equipment, port congestion and lack of visibility has driven them to choose road freight in preference to sea. However, there are advantages to shipping by sea, not least the environmental considerations and the lack of availability of lorry drivers.