Undercover
Page 28
Page 30
Page 31
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
CM challenged the bosses of the four major MSA chains to spend a night in a truck at one of their sites. Welcome Break boss Rod McKie was the only one who accepted
Words: Will Shiers / Images: Nigel Spreadbury
If we’re honest, when Welcome Break chief executive Rod McKie accepted our challenge to sleep in a truck at its South Mimms M25 truckstop, we smelt a rat. The cynics among us assumed that before the sleepover, the truckstop would get a major makeover. In our suspicious minds we imagined a fleet of mobile jet-washers disinfecting the tarmac, Aggie and Kim working their magic on the showers and Gordon Ramsay being drafted into the kitchen. But within minutes of arriving in an Iveco EcoStralis tractor unit (McKie’s bed for the night), the stench of the urine-drenched tarmac and the numerous discarded empty cans of baked beans and tuna immediately convinced us that this was going to be a completely legitimate exercise.
McKie, who has worked at Welcome Break for the past decade and has been chief executive for six years, agreed to being interviewed before the sleepover, and again the following morning.
The night before
We started by asking him whether truck drivers are valued customers. “Absolutely,” he exclaimed. “They are very important to us in terms of parking revenue and fuel sales. It’s a big part of our business.” By 8pm, South Mimms was already approaching maximum capacity. We asked McKie whether he’s aware of the chronic shortage of spaces, and enquired what he’s doing to address the problem?
“Yes, I am,” he said, “and it’s something that we are desperately trying to address with the government at the moment. A good example is Corley, where we are at 110% capacity. Northbound, there are 98 spaces and we try to cram in 120 trucks every night.” He explained that Welcome Break has applied to put in an additional 122 spaces with its own toilet and shower block, but has been met with resistance from local planning.
The South Mimms coach park is massive, and on the evening of our interview it was populated by zero coaches and six trucks, the drivers of which we assumed hadn’t noticed the signs warning them that any illegal LGV parking would incur a £250 fine. We asked McKie why trucks can’t park in coach parks overnight to help alleviate the shortage of spaces, and were surprised to learn that they can at some locations, including South Mimms. “At some sites it’s a problem because we have coach changes throughout the night, and we need to segregate. But at South Mimms it is allowed at night,” he said. We asked why in that case there isn’t a sign to notify truck drivers, and he agreed that it would make sense. On the subject of illegal parking, we enquired why caravans don’t get clamped for using truck parking spaces when they have dedicated spaces elsewhere.
“The answer is that we should. But it’s a case of knowing that they’re there. We don’t have people patrolling the car parks day and night,” he said. “Caravanners tend to be even more belligerent about where and how they should park than anyone else.” It costs £20 to park a truck overnight at South Mimms, or £25 with a meal voucher. How does Welcome Break justify these costs, especially when you can get a ‘special offer’ room in the on-site hotel for £25? “It’s a case of demand,” explained McKie. “Most of our truck parks are full all the time.” He went on to say: “Yes it’s good revenue for us, but there’s a huge cost too. The damage that trucks do to our infrastructure is huge. It costs £120,000 to resurface a truck park and our annual resurfacing bill is £1.5m. We aren’t complaining, but it’s a cost to our business that we have to compensate for. We believe we charge a fair price. What we have to give in return is good facilities and we believe that we offer them.” He cited 24-hour opening, good-quality food and decent showers as examples of these.
“We were the first of the MSAs to start investing in showers. They aren’t perfect, but we are continually looking to improve them,” he said.
We put it to him that some are far from perfect. “Some of our showers are getting better and some of them are still crap,” he admitted. “They aren’t good enough.” But he pointed out that Welcome Break continues to invest in them, and will open new wet-rooms at seven sites over the next five months. “If we have 120 truck drivers wanting showers, we have to ensure we have enough facilities,” he added.
From showers we moved on to toilets, and in particular, the stench of urine at the truck park. Would it not make sense to put toilet blocks in all truck parking areas (like he is proposing at Corby) to save drivers having to traipse to the main building, or indeed from urinating against their wheels?
McKie agreed that this would make sense at some locations, including Stansted, where the 148 truck drivers have to walk “quite a distance to the amenity building”.
But he thinks it would still be an uphill struggle to get every truck driver to use the toilets, however close they were. “I’ve seen foreign truck drivers take a s**t by the truck. That is absolutely deplorable. You confront them about it, but they think it’s OK. There is no excuse.” So if you can’t break bad habits, what about jet-washing the tarmac occasionally, we asked?
“If I’m honest, we don’t do enough,” said McKie. “Do we bother jet-washing the area as frequently as we do the main site? No we don’t! So I think it’s a fair cop to say we should probably do more because the smell isn’t pleasant.” We asked whether there should be an area for the clean and safe disposal of bottles of ‘truckers’ tizer’. “The honest answer is yes; this is something we should be thinking about,” he admitted. He went on to say that this is something he’s been discussing with under secretary of state for transport Mike Penning.
South Mimms is the only Welcome Break site with a dedicated truckstop. The menu has recently been improved, and McKie is proud of it. “We’ve gone for value for money,” he explained. “It’s good food and it’s fresh, and we are doing more of this across the sites.” He said truck drivers are not only able to redeem their food vouchers here, but also at the main MSA building. “Unlike some of our competitors, who say you can only eat at the own brand, we allow truckers to eat fast food, or whatever else they want,” he said.
But why can’t they redeem vouchers at Waitrose, we asked? “We are looking into that at the moment,” he replied. “Everyone typecasts truckers as wanting chips, beans and pie, but they don’t. They are more discerning with their coffee and food than anybody else.” And on the subject of coffee, how does Welcome Break justify charging more than the high streets?
“There is a small incremental difference, and for that I make no apologies. We have to run 24/7, 365 days a year, and unlike in Europe where MSAs are subsidised by the government, we have to pay for the infrastructure.
“We are expected to give free toilets, pay for the roads and parking facilities, the upkeep [of the site] and the lighting. In the European model they just operate the box. The rest is looked after by the government.” On the TrucknetUK forum there are pages of complaints from drivers about MSAs, but what complaints does McKie have about truckers?
First and foremost, it’s the damage that trucks do. “On the one hand trucks bring revenue, but on the other hand they destroy everything we’ve got,” he said. “A lot of foreign drivers ignore every single sign and will drive through a car park and wreck the kerb.” He gave Oxford as a good example of a site that “gets wrecked by foreign truckers that can’t read [English].
“It’s also frustrating that we get used as a dumping ground,” he continued. “Whether it’s England, Wales or Scotland, people dump pieces of crap everywhere. Anything they can’t get rid of gets dumped with us, and we have to clean it up.” That said, he’d love to have more truck parking spaces, even though every new one they get approval for costs £38,000 to build.
The morning after
We met McKie at 6am for a coffee. He had been up since 4.55am and hadn’t had a good night’s sleep.
“The cab was great,” he said, “it was luxurious and comfortable, and had all the creature comforts, but I don’t know how truckers manage to ignore all the noise. There were trucks coming and going all night. I had a neighbour reverse in at 2am.” Although McKie inspects showers on every single visit to an MSA, this was the first time he had showered in one, and it was an eye-opener.
“Until you are actually standing in the shower, you haven’t experienced it,” he said. “Although the shower was great, if I’m honest it wasn’t clean enough.” Another lesson learned was to remember to pack toothpaste whenever you spend a night in a truck. “I went to buy some and found we didn’t have any,” he said.
We asked him whether it had been a worthwhile exercise. “Yes,” was his immediate response. “I’ve spent days working at Burger King and KFC, but that’s the first time I’ve ever slept in a truck, and it was definitely worthwhile. The lessons I’ll go back with are cleanliness of showers, how frequently we should clean them, and how often they should be checked.
“Good luck to truckers – I don’t know how they do it.” n
SECURITY
“We don’t have issues with security like we used to,” explained McKie. “Every single site we have has automatic number plate recognition, and this has been a huge help.” He said other successful initiatives included improved lighting, the co-funding of police community support officers and enticing police officers on-site with subsidised meals. “I can’t remember the last time we had a complaint about a truck being slashed on one of our sites,” he said. “We do still have incidents, but our sites are safer than they have ever been.”