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Page 46
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IE
SIAN COLD
Wiseman Dairies is one of Scotland's top milk distributors. Its all-refrigerated fleet and striking Friesian livery made it an ideal candidate to launch our Runnerthon competition.
• Wiseman Dairies of East Kilbride has kicked-off Commercial Motor's Runnerthon with our Leyland Daf Roadrunner, which hasbeen fitted with a Penman refrigerated body. The Roadrunner has spent a fortnight delivering to shops and supermarkets in central Scotland.
"Around 90% of our fleet of 7.5-tonners is Iveco Ford. This is the first Leyland Daf we've used," says managing director Robert Wiseman. He inherited the firm from his father, who started it before the war with a horse and cart. Now he runs it with his two brothers.
"We grew fast when the new town took off after the war. It gave us a ready market. We're the third biggest dairy in Scotland now, behind Scottish Farm and Kennerty," says Wiseman. "Two years ago we painted our fleet black and white, like Friesian cows. It had a great effect, and really got us noticed."
Wiseman has a fleet of four Volvo 38tonne attics, 15 Volvo 17-tonners, and about 60 Iveco Ford Cargos. It also uses 60 Ford Transits and 10 3.5-tonne Mercedes vans for its local deliveries. It has a plant and four other depots in central Scotland, where it is strongest, but trunks as far as Berwick-on-Tweed and Aberdeen. The company does not run any tankers; all milk is delivered to its plants by the Scottish Milk Marketing Board, which collects from farms. It makes its large deliveries of bottles and cartons in artics, but uses its smaller vans for supermarket and doorstep deliveries.
HIGHER STANDARDS
Three years ago Wiseman decided to buy nothing but refrigerated vehicles. Robert Wiseman says that in the competitive dairy wholesale business customers are demanding higher standards of delivery, and this usually includes the requirement that products be chilled from plant to supermarket shelf.
Wiseman has grown from its East Kilbride base by buying milk processors, closing their operation and using the fac
tory as a transport depot. Almost all its bodies are made by Dumfries-based Penman, and it has just ordered another eight. It is also in the market for new acquisitions.
Robert Wiseman says the fortnight's run of the Roadrunner may persuade him to look to Leyland Daf for future fleet purchases. "The payload is 500kg more than the Mercedes," he says. The vehicle was driven by one employee — "one of our best drivers" — for the whole fortnight. Wiseman employs 210.
The next haulier to take part in Commercial Motor's Runnerthon is Cambridgeshire-based Dodds Brown, which will take on a Boalloy curtainsider for the two weeks. The other bodybuilders taking part are Brade Leigh, which is providing a dropside; York (a platform) and Besco la box van).
At the end of the stint, we will be asking you to guess how much fuel the Roadrunner has used and what distance it has covered. The Wiseman vehicle was used mostly on runs between Glasgow arid Edinburgh.
Leyland Daf has pledged 50p to the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital for every kilometre the Roadrunner covers. If the vehicle breaks down, the manufacturer has also agreed to donate 2,000 for each time it has to be repaired.