No room at the inn
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• Truck drivers are being refused parking space and turned away from the new South Mimms service station on the M25 motorway. The service area, jointly opened by BP and Trusthouse Forte five months ago, has decided to ban lorry drivers from stopping on the premises and is forcing them to park several hundred metres away on a small piece of semiderelict land without facilities.
Trusthouse Forte denies this is happening. A spokeswoman for the company told Commercial Motor, "We would not make lorry drivers feel unwelcome. We are in a business and we would not turn truck drivers away."
Commercial Motor last Friday (4 September) borrowed a Leyland Daf 1900 series 16tormer and attempted to drive into South Minims for a lunchtime break. As soon as we turned into the approach road to the services, a uniformed security guard blocked our route by driving a blue saloon car across the entrance. Contrary to Trusthouse Forte's official policy, we were told emphatically that we could not stop.
"Are you delivering here?" we were asked.
"No, we want the services," we replied, to which we were told: "Sorry, we can't park lorries here."
We were then told to go through the service area's coach park, which was less than half full with 12 to 15 coaches, go round the back of the site and out again onto the Al/M25 roundabout.
"Go to the traffic lights," said the security guard, "and turn right. As you go right you will see a Crane Fruehauf yard on your left-hand side. Put it in there."
This situation is confused and confusing. Drivers leaving both the M25 and the Al to enter the South Mimms site are misled by signs which clearly state "lorry services". At the entrance roundabout, cars and coaches are given one direction and lorries another. As you follow the lorry sign off to the left of the roundabout, you are marooned in a side road and given no further directions. Naturally, nearly all the trucks which arrived at the services during our visit drove around the system for a while before attempting to park in the coach park. Like us, they were all stopped.
The small piece of concrete yard in which drivers are being told to park is in front of a Crane Fruehauf building and directly adjoins a derelict filling station. The area is unmarked, unlit, not signposted, and very cramped. To add insult to injury, there is a closed-down transport cafe at the rear of the site.
"It's bloody ridiculous. We're being treated like second-class citizens. I just don't think it's on," said Colin Brown of Lansing, the forklift truck manufacturer. He uses the M25 regularly and last Friday was his second enforced visit to South Mimms. Like many of the angry drivers we talked to in the yard, Brown had chosen to take his statutory rest in his cab rather than make the 300m to 400m walk to the services.
"I'm not going to go and eat in there," said GEC Telecommunications driver Paul Bullock, "it's too pricey for a start. I would like to have a wash and a shower, though, but there are no facilities here or there whatsoever."
We walked to the service area with Charlie Jells, driving for R G Jellis & Son of lyinghoe, in Buckinghamshire.
"I'm really &gusted," he said. "I've got to stop here to build up my rest period. I've got to build up an extra quarter of an hour and there is nowhere else to go. I use the M25 three times a day. Something should be done about this."
The walk was difficult. There is no path from the makeshift lorry park, and no indications anywhere. Drivers are forced to walk over rubble,