Scottish hauliers suffer severe disruption due to bad weather
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By Chris Druce and Roger Brown
SCOTTISH HAULIERS say there was signiicant disruption to services last week as they battled against gale-force winds.
A red warning (the most severe) was issued by the Met Ofice for Central, Tayside, Fife, Strathclyde, south-west Scotland and Lothian & Borders on 8 and 9 December. A top speed of 165mph was recorded in the Cairngorm mountains.
Transport for Scotland says such notices are highly unusual, and transport minister Keith Brown described the conditions as “a major challenge for our transport system”.
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The Road Haulage Association warned members in the affected areas not to use high-sided vehicles or make all-but-essential journeys.
Eddie Anderson, ARR Craib Transport MD, which operates out of Aberdeen and Cumbernauld,
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tells CM: “We were only making
Image: Rex Features R essential journeys and told customers that it remained at the irm’s and our drivers’ discretion.” Derek Mitchell, MD at Caledonian Logistics, reported a 3.5-tonne vehicle carrying a pallet of CocaCola running out of the irm’s
Inverness depot had been turned over by the wind, with the driver unharmed but trapped in his cab.
David McCutcheon, MD at Bothwell-based Bullet Express, says the irm shut up shop last Thursday as Scotland’s ferry crossings stopped sailing. “We’d normally have six or seven trailers heading over to Ireland, but the crossing is closed. There’s nothing we can do.” Michael Lacey, transport operations manager at Grampian Continental, says the irm worked through the bad weather as it had few high-sided vehicles.
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