As our first blog we thought we would put your minds at ease about how we survived last week’s blizzard.

On the evening of Thursday 12 January I went to bed on a cold night hoping that the dreaded snow that was forecast would not materialise. How wrong was I..

I woke up to at least 3 mm of the white stuff. I was worried. How would I get to work, let alone get the lorry out of the yard.

I was hauling for Hills Quarry Products out of their Quarry in Shorncote, near Cirencester to a site on the outskirts of Swindon. Luckily the roads had been gritted and the roads were clear. The snow had not settled too deep and snow chains were not required.

The quarry was white when I arrived at 7 am. It was Ice Road Trucking at its best. Again, I could get through the snow. It wasn’t as deep here. Probably about 1-2 mm deep. The track down to the 6F5 stone is very rough but as the snow had not settled too much I managed to negotiate this without too many problems. The loader managed to survive the treacherous track too so we were able to get on our way without any hiccups.

The main road to Swindon was clear of snow and the roads were free from incident. Although a few people were not driving very carefully for the condition of the road. I arrived at the site and the snow had nearly cleared so we were free of incident here, although the banksman on site did have trouble keeping his hard hat on every time he bent over.

I had 5 loads here and 1 load to go to the local block factory. The 5 loads to Swindon were completed without any incidents. I did, however, receive a phone call to say the block factory had closed for the day due to the dangerous conditions. Luckily I was offered another load to Swindon to cover this loss.

As for the rest of the company, they all managed to carry on as normal. The groundwork were able to continue their jobs in both Sutton Benger and Chipping Norton and the other lorries suffered no incident on their travels.

Luckily we could all turn around and say….

..WE SURVIVED THE BLIZZARD OF 2017

 

-written by Matt Ward