A 44 tonne refrigerated lorry is blocking the road ahead. It emerged from one of the new business parks designed to regenerate the edge of Enfield and tried to turn right on to the four lane trunk road which will eventually lead it to the M25. But it is too big, and traffic piles up as it reverses and tries again.

"Our roads are just not built for them," says Glyn Jones, Enfield's head of transportation planning. "The trend nationally is that as the lorries have got bigger, there are fewer of them. But they damage the roads more and they are less environmentally friendly."

Logistics is an industry that barely existed 20 years ago, but food and goods which would in the past have come from local sources are now frequently trucked halfway across Europe, and two decades ago there was an explosion in heavy goods vehicles.

Growth had slowed in the past 10 years, as distribution companies became more efficient, but it is growing again. The impact on Enfield is typical of the pattern across the country.

As manufacturing declined, whole areas have been regenerated as centres of distribution. Marks & Spencer, Iceland, Whitbread, Coca-Cola and Matalan all have transport and distribution hubs on the edge of the borough. In nearby Waltham, J Sainsbury is building its biggest regional distribution centre in the UK.

From these hubs, the juggernauts can take supplies around the M25 and out to stores throughout the southeast. The business brings needed jobs to a deprived area: the new Innova Park development where Iceland lorries come and go day and night will employ 3,000 to 4,000 people.

"Overall it's very successful, but in transport terms it creates extra difficulties, because the jobs are car-based, quite apart from the lorries," Ms Jones says.

A plan to build an access road to the M25 from this part of the borough has just been overruled by the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, on environmental grounds.