I’m posting this in both the main forum and the Old Time, so if you’ve replied on one feel free to ignore the other! It’s the first of two posts looking for some people with quite specific experience for a couple of features I’m putting together for T&D. This is the more urgent of the two, hence it coming first!
I’m looking for drivers who were around just as RDCs started to become a thing, and in their early days, for a historical piece. Were you on shop deliveries when it was all still taken direct from supplier to seller? Were you someone who remembers that kind of work first starting to change? Or were you new to the game at the same time as these places were starting to kick off? Past research tell me we’re looking at the late 80s/early 90s time period, but I may be way off…
If any of the above, or any other permutation of the above, applies to you, would you be up for giving me 20 minutes of your time for a quick phone interview please? If so, reply below and I’ll drop you a PM.
Hi Lucy, once again, I might be able to help you with this article as well, as far as I can remember in the Northern half of the Country, Kwik Save, were one of the first to try this kind of RDC’s distribution model. They seemed to have the whse to store deliveries sorted but the delivery into the RDC in North Wales left a lot to be desired, a lot worse than todays RDC’s. In later years I did regular loads into the ex Christian Salveson run M&S cold store at Easton, think it’s now run by XPO.
Obviously I wasn’t even born in 1970 but Wiki says that Tesco had more than 800 stores by then so surely they must have had some type of RDC arrangement?
Regarding Tescos Harry, didn’t you ever deliver to the warehouse at Delamare Road Cheshunt in the days before RDC’s? that was akin to delivering in a haulage yard with warehouses scattered around the place, soap powder went in one, Sugar in another ect, all delivered on flat trailers too.
I was always in there with Proctor & Gamble loads, unloaded out on the street sometimes too
Hi Lucy.
I started driving in 1990 & RDCs were just starting to get a bit regular, I always remember tipping at Tesco Crick wearing my England tracky bottoms, Arsenal top & reebok hexalite trainers
You wouldn’t even be able to book in at security now dressed like that.
gunnerheskey:
Hi Lucy.
I started driving in 1990 & RDCs were just starting to get a bit regular, I always remember tipping at Tesco Crick wearing my England tracky bottoms, Arsenal top & reebok hexalite trainers
You wouldn’t even be able to book in at security now dressed like that.
Should of been charged for that shirt lol, I recall as a kid … going out in his Tibet and Britten trucks doing St ives work from the Walthamstow plant … and taking it to the midlands … that was 30 odd years ago mind
truckyboy:
Sainsburys had one in the late 70`s in buntingford…a well known hub for international traffic.
Buntingford was a first for Sainsburys, it all went out of Blackfriars HQ before that. Don’t know if it was the first purpose built RDC but I’ve don’t think I’ve seen many older looking ones.
I started working for Glass Glover Distribution at Tesco’s new RDC in Doncaster in early 1989 , it had opened late 1988 in conjunction with another in Middleton , Manchester . Tesco also had another depot at Middleton ‘Midd 1’ along with Winsford doing ambient deliveries .
Doncaster served stores along the eastern side of the Pennines down to the Birmingham area just this side of the M25 ,Stevenage , Baldock and across to Norwich up the east coast to Newcastle, Middleton
covered the west of the country .
The trucks were mainly DAF 2500s a sprinkling of Leyland Roadtrains and a few Volvo FL10s , trailers were all fridges as Doncaster and Middleton were known as ‘Composite’ depots .
I had gone from general haulage earning about £2.80 ph to Glass Glovers £4.60 ph with time and a half and double time …did I think I’d hit the big time wow!
if you are interested in any more PM me .
My first experience of RDC’s was in the later 70’s and early 80’s, at the time I drove for Swifts in Duston, Northampton and did night shifts for my fist 6 years. Mostly on the night shift my job was just trunks to and from other depots, either Wakefield, Stroud. Maidstone or sometimes a change over with a Glasgow driver. On odd occasions I would get a delivery to Tesco RDC in Crick, this was my most hated job and it was only half an hour from the Duston depot along the A428, it involved waiting for hours on end most nights just to get either unloaded or have my load rejected, the later could be particularly annoying if the load was as was often on a flat bed, roped and sheeted, it then had to be re-sheeted. One night which will stick in my mind was arriving at Tesco at 7.00pm and told to wait in line, 12 hours later my opposite number who drove the truck on the day shift arrived in a company car to relieve me and I then drove the car back to Duston. Thinking the event to be extremely rare was very dumb of me because the following night when I arrived at Duston I was given the same company car and sent to relieve him, he had been sitting there all day with the same load, I did eventually get offloaded at 03.00am and ran back to the depot.
When I drove for Federal Express on the Matchbox toys contract it was the Tesco’s in Kiln Farm MK we went to regularly and we were messed about just as badly. One particular day I had a split load, half of the load was due at 09.30am and the other half was due at 5.00pm, I had a young traffic office lady in the cab who was studying the times for delivery work. Tesco’s unloaded the first half and then sent my to park outside the fence and told me to return after 4.00pm. Even back then in the very early 80’s we had in cab phones and I had to call Fed Ex in Rugby to come down and collect her. I got unloaded at 4.30pm. drove to my house in Towcester and parked for the night. Strangely it was my laid back attitude about waiting and getting overtime pay when sleeping or watching TV that got me in the good books with a lot of the Tesco drivers, so much so that when we were all made redundant from the Matchbox contract some of them got together and got me a job as a full time Tesco driver, which was a very hard position to get.
Tesco were by no means the worst, Argos in Daventry or Normanton, Yorkshire were by far the worst and I would sometimes spend days there.
truckyboy:
Sainsburys had one in the late 70`s in buntingford…a well known hub for international traffic.
Buntingford was a first for Sainsburys, it all went out of Blackfriars HQ before that. Don’t know if it was the first purpose built RDC but I’ve don’t think I’ve seen many older looking ones.
I used to work for Hertz truck Rental in the mid-70’s and was based at the Woolwich branch. This was located near the junction of Woolwich Road and Anchor and Hope Lane in Charlton. Sainsburys had a warehouse/RDC there. A Company called Warren & Warren who were based in Rotherhithe carried for Sainsburys, I believe it was the chilled and frozen products, the livery was dark green and orange.
In the mid-80’s I moved to Bermondsey and lived next door to the warehouse manager from Charlton who had previously been a docker.
but Wiki says that Tesco had more than 800 stores by then so surely they must have had some type of RDC arrangement?
