News

The Road Haulage Association has written to Department for Transport minister Lord Adonis to call for a national strategy to keep the UK's roads open during severe weather conditions, such as those of the past fortnight.

"In general, the Highways Agency [HA] performed well," says RHA chief executive Roger King. "However, it was hazardous that detrunked roads, which are equally as important for truck drivers as strategic roads, were not treated.

"We want to know why this is the case and why so many local authorities seem to have run perilously close to running out of rock salt altogether," says King.

The RHA's letter presses the minister to consider establishing strategic reserves of rock salt, under the management of the HA, for example, which can be accessed by local authorities.

Salt Union (SU), the country's largest supplier of rock salt, claims that stock became depleted in December when there was a cold spell, and that last week it reached a situation where "demand was outstripping supply".

"We had 140 trucks a day leaving our Winsford r ock salt mine. The trouble isn't a lack of bodies – the machine used to extract the salt only has a certain capacity, so we can't extract any more salt than we already are," says an SU spokesperson.

Rob Dean, transport manager at bulk tipper specialist Walter Carefoot & Sons (Transport), says the company has been working flat out, moving over 120 loads per day –between 3,500 tonnes and 5,000 tonnes – from five sites across the North-West. "It's been a monumental task to keep everything under control, but we've managed everything that's been asked of us," adds Dean.

The 60-truck Preston-based firm says it was only told on Monday that drivers' hours rules had been relaxed for those deploying salt. "If we'd known earlier,we would have been able to move more over the weekend," says Dean.