Petrol stations in Nottinghamshire, are running dry following the announcement of a vote for strike action by tanker drivers in the Unite Union.

There are reports of panic buying across the county, causing disruption in a number of cases. Tesco Express in Mansfield and Asda at West Bridgford both apparently ran run out completely.

Despite Francis Maude being forced to admit his advice to store petrol in a jerry can was a "mistake," Mike Bettison from the BBC claimed on Twitter that "shopkeepers have reported increases in jerry sales.DIY stores reporting a run on 'jerry' cans,queues at petrol stations across Nottinghamshire - supplies running low in some areas."

This is obviously testament to the government's cack-handed approach to dealing with the strike.This is hardly news, recall their similarly ill-considered suggestions during strikes by teachers last year that schools could be run by parents with no knowledge of teaching, nor any of the stringent criminal record checks to which anybody working with children is subject nowdays. The only difference is that people actually took them seriously this time.

What has been less talked about is how this illustrates the weakness of Just In Time capitalism.

So far, Unite hasn't even set any dates for strike action. As unions are required to give a week's notice of industrial action, this means that there can't and won't be a strike before Friday 6th April at the earliest. Despite this, the system is already straining as people try and prepare for the possible threat of an interruption to supply.

Of course, the government is planning to use the army as a scab labour force to undermine the strike and ensure oil is distributed. However, you do rather get the impression that nobody is very confident this will ensure supplies continue to get through.

The only reason that such a small group of workers can have such an impact is because the system they operate in is so finely balanced. This is the model of Just In Time capitalism. Rather than holding large supplies of a good (storage is expensive) shops only hold as much as they need and get it replaced just before it runs out. This makes great sense from an economic perspective when things are going well, but it leaves supply channels vulnerable to shocks.

In the Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out that an economist looking at the human body would determine that having two lungs and two kidneys was inefficient. Why not stick with one of each? Of course anybody "optimised" along such lines would come a cropper the first time they had a serious accident. It's crazy, but economists consider themselves cleverer than hundreds of millions of year of evolution. We don't need redundancy in our systems - it's inefficient.

The problem is not limited to oil distribution, of course. Supermarkets and most retail outlets operate along similar lines. If they are unable to keep their lorries (and given the "out of town" locations of most supermarkets they remain reliant on lorries, even if rail could pick up the volume) fuelled and on the road, there could potentially be problems getting food onto the shelves.

One possibility (if Unite do their job probably) is that the employers will see the problems so far as proff of how important these workers are and listen to them. Another is that Unite cave under political pressure and sell their members out. Even if the strike does go ahead, we're unlikely to be reduced to fighting each other with pointy sticks for at least a day or two.

The key thing to take from this is that although neo-liberal capitalism has done an exceptionally good job of taming working class movements in the UK they have also created a system that makes it particularly vulnerable to carefully applied pressure from even a relatively small group. Worth thinking about if anybody is considering any solidarity actions with the strike or more widely for tactics to utilise in future struggles.