As residents' associations lobby their local councils to ban lorries from their particular street, width barriers and weight restrictions sprout throughout suburbia. Will the residents be quite so pleased when the local store is unable to deliver in their area because the delivery van is too wide? Providing for the consumer's convenience, while protecting the environment, is a pressing problem tor today's planners. In this paper, originally presented at a seminar organised by the Midlands Group of the Centre for PDM, one local authority surveyor discusses some of the problems of transportation in an urban area.