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Spreading the gospel
Page 16
Page 17
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A week of frantic activity and it's all over for this year — Commercial Motor's first National Truck Week was the success we'd all hoped for. Emma Penny reviews the action.
It's been a busier-than-usual week for everyone at Commercial Motor as our National Truck Week roadsh ow travelled down from Edinburgh at the start of the week to finish at Dover. In between there were visits to Newcastle, Birmingham and Portsmouth.'The aim of all this travelling? To convince the public that trucks are a vital part of everyday life in the UK, and that their lives wouldn't be anywhere near as comfortable without them.
We realised from the start that getting the public to accept the importance of trucks was going to be a tough nut to crack ,so we had to be inventive in finding ways to get our message across — something that involved many months of planning.
At the heart of the week was our five-day roadshow and that took a huge amount of planning — not least finding cities that would allow us to take three trucks into their centres (more difficult than we had appreciated ),We also had to sort out how we would move the three trucks from city to city every day; agency Driver Hire stepped into the breach and provided a team of drivers for the week. After plenty of discussion we'd settled on a specially designed factsheet with eight questions, with the answers hidden behind doors, like an advent calendar. On the back of each sheet we explained each answer to help ensure everyone was aware of the crucial role of trucks; they also carried the address of the National Truck Week website for more information (www.nationaltruckweek.com).
Our campaign in each city started just before Sam, when we began handing out 50 bacon butties and the fact sheets to motorists stuck in traffic — a real success. After that we targeted local radio stations with more butties, then it was on to the roadshow itself. These were for the most part incredibly busy, although sometimes our positioning courtesy of the local councils was less than ideal.
At each venue we had two or three people handing out goodies such as National Truck Week helium balloons, lollies and factsheets — Daf and Driver Hire chipped in with extra gifts such as pens and keyrings. Besides this, we had a model truck racing game. which attracted plenty of attention,with the winner in each city receiving a remote control bull-nose Scania.
There were lots of people who wanted to see inside a truck; most seemed worried about climbing up so high, but impressed by the level of comfort they found there. Some expressed an interest in driving for a living; we were able to give them copies of the careers booklet we'd prepared for the roadshows, explaining how to get started in the industry.
Local newspapers came to visit each roadshow, and we also had interest from a number of radio stations, notably BBC Radio Newcastle which ran a 10-minute slot on the truck industry, and from Portsmouth's Quay Radio. A week of sending coffee and doughnuts to Radio 2's SallyTraffic paid off with a good mention on the Steve Wright Show, He was particularly
interested in the fact that it would need almost 1,000 cars to take home the contents delivered to a supermarket by a single 44-tonne artic.
• Thanks to Iveco, Daf and Mercedes-Benz for loaning us trucks for the week,and to Driver Hire, one of the UK's biggest driver agencies, which kindly provided us with drivers for each leg of thc j ourney south.
Roadshaw diary
Days one and two: Edinburgh and Newcastle Persuading Edinburgh's public to speak to us
,e
• proved to be a little chal
lenging. with their natural reserve coming to the fore on a very chilly Scottish day. writes ex
FDI,LL.; 4„ pat Scot and CM dep
uty editor Emma
--------— Penny.
But we gave plenty of freebies away and we also had a good smattering of foreign tourists who came to see us, rather bemused by the fact that we actually had to tell the public about the importance of road transport. Most came from countries where trucks and their drivers are naturally appreciated.
Our new CM blimp, designed to attract visitors to our roadshow, proved a little wayward when the wind rose we were forced to take it down rather earlier than we had planned after an unscheduled close encoun
ter with neighbouring Lothian Road!
Once we'd packed up our convoy of trucks headed down theAl towards Newcastle. We set up in the square at the Centre for Life where we'd a very busy day with queues of people trying our model truck race and plenty of visitors intrigued to see the inside of a truck, and to talk about truck driving as a career.
Day three: Birmingham It was all blue skies and sunshine in Birmingham when CM'S National Truck Week road show rolled into town, writes Chris Tmdall, deputy section editor of CM:sThis Week section.
It was the "Win a Truck" competition that drew the most interest from the Bull Ring shopping centre's visitors, after the gleaming Daf and Mercedes trucks had grabbed the locals' attention. Guiding a radio controlled Eddie Stobart artic around an obstacle course in the quickest time possible proved an irresistible challenge, and queues formed as thecity's young and not so young clamoured to take part.
Toddlers were handed helium-filled CM balloons and we were able to give away a host of merchandise to passers by interested in starting a career in transport, learning about the opportunities available or just finding out about trucks in general. Days four and five: Portsmouth and Dover In Portsmouth, the roadshow was within spitting distance of the city's university, writes CM business editor Tim Maughan.
Students tried their hand at our remote control Scania T cab circuit; other passers-by, including an elderly lady, climbed into the red Daf 95XF which we'd brought, along with a Mercedes-Benz Actros.
All were impressed by the sheer size of the trucks, and especially by their wealth of creature comforts.
In chilly Portsmouth we had the opportunity to fly the Commercial Motor blimp. One woman had seen the balloon from her kitchen window, prompting her to drop in to see us.
The great British public seemed to be aware that HGVs have a role to play in the UK, but few appreciated just how vital trucks are to the economy.Visitors to the roadshow were enlightened by our pamphlets, which outlined the vital statistics of the British road transport industry.
In Dover a cross-section of society learned some facts about the UK road transport business. From students to road sweepers, paratroopers to housewives, everyone we met was furnished with a few hard facts about the British HGV pare. •