Self-help schemes like these are way forward
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Never in the field of environmental conflict have so few come forward to serve so many. Alan MIllar visists Tayside Truckstop LONG BEFORE it was ever published, the 1980 Armitage Report on lorries, people and the environment was branded as a vehicle for the increase in lorry weights. That, certainly, was its main effect, but there were many side issues tucked away inside its pages which had no direct bearing on the famous findings that led eventually to today's 38-tonne upper weight limit.
One such subsidiary matter was a recommendation that the industry should provide its own parking space for lorries, and that was something that many in the industry considered to be an unfair imposition. After all, the spokesmen said, local authority controls have already driven vehicles away from the most desirable parking places, and the industry is a well-tapped source of income for the various layers of government.
That was all very well, but it did nothing to cure a chronic problem which gives the industry a poor image with the public, and it will be self-help schemes which will help improve the image.
One of the few such schemes to emerge so far is the Tayside Truckstop, a secure overnight lorry park and restaurant complex opened last month on Dun dee's ring road. It is the brain child of specialist textile haulier P. S. Ridgway, which is firmly established in the city, and it is probably the only civilised stopping place for lorries be tween Perth and Aberdeen, on one of the main trunk haulage routes in Scotland.
Brothers Philip and Donald Ridgway, who run the haulage company, have an enlightened approach to the industry. They are keen to harness the potential of the microchip revolution, and at a human level have elevated their workforce to salaried status to get away from the jungle of bonuses and hourly wage rates. Truckstop is really another example of that same enlightened approach.
They first became seriously interested in the venture when Dundee's city centre lorry park for 80 to 100 lorries suddenly came under sentence of death. The Scottish Development Agency, which is charged with the economic redevelopment of the country, is undertaking a Dundee Project to restructure the hitherto jute and shipbuilding-based economy, and needed the lorry park for part of its work.
As Philip Ridgway put it to me when I visited the Truckstop site a few days before builders were scheduled to hand it over: "We could have been running a year ago if we had just provided parking space."
But the brothers had followed developments elsewhere in Britain and were especially attracted by the Penrith Truckstop, which combines parking and refuelling services with dining and sleeping accommodation of a high standard.
There was no point in expecting drivers to be happy with an out-of-town lorry park, which may satisfy pressure to keep lorries out of residential or built-up areas, if they were going to be isolated from the facilities and attractions of the city centre.
The Smeaton Road site, which is used already for other Ridgway ventures including a Veeder Root tachograph centre, goods vehicle repairs, ERF (and soon Daf) service back-up, and a group training association, is well sited for the new enterprise. It is on a route used by traffic heading to or from Abr and there is a hope thai using it will generate adi business for the establish vice facilities.
As part of a £300,000 ment in the Truckstop, office accommodation hu transformed into a come of restaurant, bar, pool shower and toilet facilitiE which are decorated to standard. In deference haulage industry, the facilities are named TI Drop, and the recognisal nants of a life-expired k have been salvaged to modern sculptured entr the complex.
Philip's wife Sheila is holder for the bar but th( rant service has been ft
J no's, an Italian restaurant ess in Dundee. A respecta:nge of meals is being profor between £1.60 for band egg to £2.75 for rump these being served be6am and 9pm, when it is that passing car and, e, coach traffic will also
9pm, the pool table is ble and video films are As an added attraction, 5ad Haulage Association's fax information and loadling teletext service is exhion a carousel unit, and nembers have free phone to the Cargofax terminal igway's headquarters on ger side of Dundee.
initial make-up of the ex was determined by the 3 of a survey carried out in irship with the SDA. Inrvs with drivers at the city site revealed a high defor washing, dining and
but 82 per cent of vers said they intended to in their cabs. That relethe provision of sleeping :modation to a secondary )ut plumbing and heating
have been provided I view to building addisleeping accommodation Dorns if demand develops. 3mporary measure, portaeping cabins may be pro .e is a Shell dery fuelling at the entrance to the top, with the control area Ily designed for staff to eye level with drivers in abs. Each vehicle is allots own space in the 100: park with spaces refor vehicles making an tart or which have refrigeunits running. In both the idea is to prevent irivers' sleep from being :ed by running engines.
is an optional early ig "knock up" service )ble from Sam, and ig newspapers are proThe overnight charge of itles the driver to a 50p 1St discount.
Ridgways are determined uckstop should not only d, but that it should main! quality standards estabit the outset.
tionnaires are being cird asking for drivers' is of the services proand whether they have I the facilities. They have aged drivers to particiy holding weekly prize 5f "lucky" forms. For the to 12 weeks, the lure of :le televisions should magnetic bait for the re luctant form fillers, and subsequent draws will have such items as anoraks or air horns as a prize.
In a similar vein, Shell is joining with the Ridgways in promoting dery sales, with a £1.64 per gallon rate from the start. Magic number cards are being given to each driver who refuels at Truckstop with cash prizes of up to £1,000 being offered. In winter the brothers plan to offer the option of dery with anti-waxing additive, following the success with dery treated in this way in their own fleet.
The entire parking area is floodlit and closed circuit television cameras scan the site. In the event of this being breached and a crime being committed, the linking of the cameras to a video recorder will ensure that the crime and its perpetrators will be recorded in the act and be more easily prosecuted. As with sleeping accommodation, the Ridgways are treading cautiously with security facilities and have still to decide whether to create a special high-security section of the site. In the meantime, a stock of fifth-wheel locks is being held to immobilise parked vehicles.
Truckstop has been conceived as an answer to drivers' prayers for a better standard for rest facilities, but it would be wrong to deny that the Ridgways also see it as a business opportunity. They hope operators will make use of the adjacent vehicle servicing and back-up services and are prepared to start a 24-hour operation in the repair shop if there is a sign of interest from companies prepared to have their vehicles maintained while their driver sleeps.
Donald Ridgway also hopes that Roads, the hauliers' co-ope
rative established in the former RHA Southern Area and a venture in which P. S. Ridgway has a stake, will be interested in establishing a fuel bunkering facility at Dundee. Roads already has a similar arrangement with Shell at the Penrith Truckstop.
Tayside Truckstop has also done its little bit to relieve the unemployment problems of Dundee. Eleven jobs have been created by the main business, with another eight in the restaurant, and there are high hopes that expansion of the vehicle servicing facilities will generate more employment.
The days of the lorry driver being treated as a gypsy, reviled in every fleapit in which he is compelled to stop, may not yet be gone. But the Truckstop concept shows the direction of progress and is proof that the industry is capable of answering its own needs.