OPERATOR FEEDBACK
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SOUTHERN COUNTIES AGRICULTURAL TRADING SOCIETY
Scats (Southern Counties Agricultural Trading Society) has recently been going through a period of acquisition and merger. The farmers' co-operative was established in 1909; it bought Lincolnshire-based B DR last year—this year it bought Countrywide Farmers' grain business (but not its feed business) to become the second largest exporter/ importer of grain in the country With its own silos at its deep-water berth in Southampton the company has a turnover of 1.5 million tonnes a year, in addition to its interests in fer tilizers, chemicals and its Countrystore business. To coincide with the company's expansion Scats has changed its red and yellow livery to a tasteful shade of green.
Scats' main vehicle workshop is at Micheldever. Hampshire where transport manager Roger Brown, who has been with Scats for more than 40 years, operates a fleet of 15 ERFs. Ten are ECrrs, including four 38os. The other six, all acquired this year, are 405s equipped with new tipping trailers "ready for operation at 44 tonnes. We already carry up to 26 tonnes operating at 41 tonnes so the extra three tonnes will bring us up to a 29-tonne payload," he says. "All the trucks are equipped with either Weight Watcher or P&M on-board weighers and we now operate from the north of England to the South Coast. The trucks cover about 55,000 miles a year. When they get off the motorway there is often quite a lot of low-gear work involved in getting to the farms. Overall we get about 5mpg.
"We have run ERFs here for the past 15 years from when we changed over from Gardner-engined Leylands,"