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In Spain last week, a trucker's strike that started as truck drivers were demanding a minimum payment for services as fuel prices continue to spike wiping out truck drivers opportunities to make money, ended just as similar strikes were ramping up in other countries around the world.

MADRID, Spain—Spain gradually recovered from food shortages as a five-day-old truckers' strike appeared to lose steam, government officials and merchants said Friday.

Officials at Madrid's main wholesale market, Mercamadrid, said supplies were more abundant but still not back to 100 percent.

Luis Alberto Carrillon, president of a fruit wholesalers association, said supplies were at 60 percent of normal, which he called a big improvement. "The strike is winding down," he told Associated Press Television News.

The strike is being waged by self-employed drivers who make up a small sector of the Spanish trucking industry.

They want the government to establish minimum, guaranteed rates for their services, and say otherwise they cannot compete with large trucking companies, which are better able to cope with diesel fuel prices that have risen 36 percent in a year.

San Jose Mercury News

Food supplies were the most noticeable items impacted by the Spanish trucker's strike while other supplies, equipment and products from repair parts to ac compressors were delayed in their shipment with rumors of some items being sold from the back of trucks.