Fewer drivers are picking up hitch-hikers these days – as Ben Bentley found when he tried to thumb his way from Telford to Shrewsbury.

My thumb isn’t working. As I stand at the side of the Shrewsbury-bound A5, the digit I use mainly for saying hello but also in appealing to the benevolent side of passing lorry drivers is roundly ignored by motorist after motorist.

Hitch-hiking, it would seem, is not what it used to be. On a cardboard sign I’m holding I’ve written the word “Shrewsbury” in marker pen, but I might as well have put: “Please take no notice of me”.

In a time of recession, rising fuel prices and a general drive to make us use our cars less, you might expect that the art of hitching a lift, popular in the 1960s and 1970s and romanticised by the writer Jack Kerouac in his book On the Road, would be be enjoying a resurgence.

Perhaps for commuters, hitch-hiking has got organised and mutated into something approaching the more formal agreement of lift-sharing. Today there are websites such as Digihitch allowing people to organise this. But in the past, the old-fashioned thumb was the tool of a freewheeler’s trade and, no matter where you were in the world, putting it up at the side of the road was the international sign that the owner of the thumb was looking for a lift.

Yet the sign is losing its power, with a recent AA study finding that three-quarters of its members would never consider offering a hitch-hiker a lift.

But one-in-four is optimistic. I’d put it more at one in 400 judging by the number of vehicles that pass me without acknowledgment and leave me twiddling my thumbs at the side of the road, facing a long wait for kindness and a set of wheels.

For whatever reason – whether it’s fear or a lack of trust, and I’m not sure I’d pick up a stranger from the side of the road – after 30 minutes standing by on a grass verge near the A5 junction with Drummery Lane near Wrockwardine, I am lift-less and my journey from A to B is starting to look more like a sponsored effort to stand on the same spot without falling asleep.

White vans hurtle past bearing logos that promise to solve all your transport logistics but which don’t solve any of mine. They are followed by endless lines of lorries, cement mixers, single drivers in family cars, lone female motorists, sales reps and seemingly every other driver on the road in the country.

Motorists’ reactions to my presence vary: most ignore me; some smile, some shrug their shoulders; one mouths the words “Sorry” and the driver of a gaudy green L-reg Rover offers an innovative response to my thumb – he puts up two fingers.

And, right there, we had a whole Q&A session using only our hands.

I am reminded of that other lone waiting game, fishing. Sensing my lack of a catch might be due to my location, I move a few hundred yards down the road towards a stretch leading to a layby.

And wait some more. My thumb starts to ache as its power drains away.

After 50 minutes I’m about to give up when along comes my knight in a shining Fiat. The car slows and pulls into a layby. I rush up to it and get in.

“Shrewsbury?” says my savour. Yes, very please! And my faith is restored, not only in hitch-hiking but in human kindness.

The driver is Bridgnorth teacher Julian Dean, who’s less like the AA’s one-in-four and more like one-in-a-million.

Does he regularly come to the aid of hitch-hikers?

“I always consider it,” he says. “I don’t think you can help but check the person out first but you looked respectable and I used to hitch-hike in my younger days.”

Ah, could this be the reason for my lack of success. While there are more cars on the road, a generation has gone by that is unfamiliar with seeing hitch-hikers, whose status has slipped to a notch above beggar.

Julian continues: “I once hitch-hiked to Vienna from Wolverhampton in the late ’70s. My dad just dropped me off and I just went from there.

“And I used to hitch-hike from Bridgnorth to Telford regularly when I went to school.”

Julian adds: “You don’t see so many hitch-hikers doing it now and I think it’s a shame because it’s a green way of getting about and it’s cheap.

“I’ve got some friends in Cuba and there is more expectation there to pick up hitch-hikers because many people don’t have cars.”

Eventually I reach Atcham and now face the prospect of the return journey. I flip my sign over to read “Telford” and start again, holding up my aching thumb and smiling at strangers in cars.

It’s the same hurry up and wait story, and after 40 minutes I begin to walk along the roadside.

A passing cyclist offers sympathy and says she’d give me a lift if she was riding a tandem, and an approaching Arriva bus starts to look tempting. But I hang in there as my patience reaches the end of the road.

Then the driver of a Citroen slows down to a stop.

“You look like you need a lift,” says the driver who introduces himself as 58-year-old Steve Douglas from Albrighton.

Again, the man answering my call is a former hitch-hiker himself who recognises the power of the thumb. He says: “There used to be a queue of hitch-hikers at certain roundabouts, especially if there was a festival or a motorcycle event. When I lived in London you could hitch-hike to Birmingham faster than you could get back by train.

“You would only have to wait three or four minutes at the motorway junction and a lorry would stop.”

Steve admits that attitudes to hitch-hikers have changed and both motorists and those looking for a lift are right to be vigilant.

But he adds: “You try and use public transport but it’s hopeless in rural areas.”

Two-and-a-half hours later, I arrive back where I began with a throbbing thumb. It’s cost me nothing and I’ve even made friends, but next time I’m going nowhere in a rush I’ll go by bus.