Yorkshire Water Tankers And The 1995 Drought

Living just down the road in Denshaw at the time i remember the long queues of tankers next to Booth Wood Reservoir next to the M62 during the drought of 1995 and the huge expanse of tarmac they laid to get tankers near to Scammonden Reservoir just off the A640.

For those unfamiliar with the event here’s a press release from November 1995…

Yorkshire Water yesterday doubled its efforts to bring water to the region’s drought-hit cities by road.
The facts are that reservoirs in West Yorkshire are to small and there is not system in place to easily transfer water from the East, where supplies are plentiful, to the West where they are desperately needed .
Up to 600 road tankers will move millions of gallons a day, an operation unprecedented for a British water company. New slip roads, lorry parks and gantries carrying hoses have had to be installed.
Although some rain is forecast we’re not out of the woods said a spokesman. ‘‘If people think we’re crying wolf, they should come and look at the reservoirs.’’
The emptiest of these are now 13 per cent full, slightly up on a week ago. But normally at this time of year they would be 80 per cent full, or 33 per cent in a bad year.
For the past 10 weeks a growing number of tankers have been taking water from Loftsome Bridge water treatment works, near Selby, more than 40 miles to Halifax and Huddersfield, the worst affected areas.
Yesterday two new tankering operations began. One will be bringing up to 25,000 tons of water a day from Long Newton reservoir, on Teesside, to reservoirs serving Leeds, using up to 300 tankers.
They will work 24 hours a day, making several of the 130-mile round trips.
Much of the water they are bringing comes ultimately from Kielder Water, in Northumberland, the largest man-made reservoir in Europe, having first moved by pipeline, then the river Tees, then another pipeline to the reservoir.
The other operation is bringing water from the mains of York to Leeds, using 50 tankers.
All the tankers have to be steam cleaned before they can carry water, and the total operation is costing the company about £3m a week.
Tankers are running 24/7 between Kielder Dam in Northumberland and Eccup Reservoir to ensure Leeds’ taps dont run dry and every water tanker in the country is committed to run for Yorkshire Water.
Yorkshire Water has brought in one of Britain’s largest road freight firms, Exel Logistics, to run the entire operation from next Monday. But the owners of some small haulage firms whose tankers and drivers have been sub-contracted are warning that their pay and conditions will deteriorate sharply under the new regime.
‘‘If this new system goes ahead it means I and many others drivers will pack up,’’ said one company owner, who has hired 10 tankers and taken on drivers who were on the dole. He claimed the vehicles would have to be driven dangerously fast if they were to make any money from their contracts. Yorkshire Water said talks between sub-contractors and Exel Logistics were continuing and it would not compromise on road safety.
Last week the Government held a public inquiry into Yorkshire Water’s request for an emergency drought order which would allow it to cut off households for 24 hours at a time.

Have a few pictures to add to the thread if you have any comments or stories from the time lets hear about them i remember that at the time you could not hire a single tanker from anywhere in the country …

Loading water destination Halifax.
This was one of the locations for loading up Longnewton Reservoir near Darlington in 1995.

"Form a queue driver"
The scene on the A672 Oldham Road adjacent to Boothwood Reservoir.

Under the temporary gantry at Boothwood Reservoir you can see the M62 in the background which also became an unloading point with the hard shoulder used for tanker parking while they emptied their tanks.

Thanks for that Moomooland,I’d been off tanks a long time when that occurred but I remember it well. :smiley:

Follow the yellow brick road.
These temporary tanker route signs appeared all over the place
Remember these were the days before sat nav, how ever did we manage :smiley: .

We were running tarmac up there so that a pad could be laid for the tankers to unload on, if anything broke down it was just dragged out of the way regardless as they couldn’t lay the stuff fast enough.

Pete.

windrush:
We were running tarmac up there so that a pad could be laid for the tankers to unload on, if anything broke down it was just dragged out of the way regardless as they couldn’t lay the stuff fast enough.Pete.

They certainly laid some tarmac above Scammonden just off the A640, money was no object.

Dave Spencer filmed some of this and put it on youtube .

BW 13.jpgInstalling the pipework to pump water into the almost empty Scammonden Dam in the background

The gantry at Booth Wood Reservoir the Volvo looks like one of Pattersons.

I remember taking the telephone call in the traffic office early one morning from the water company, asking if we had any tankers we could provide. I wasn’t on the tanker division of Turners then, (but I did end up getting involved in the water job), so I went to find the manager of the food grade tanker fleet when he came in to work. At first he thought it was a wind-up. He gave me a rate per load to give to the water company, which was about twice a normal rate for a tanker, and they said “how many can you send us?” We put several on the job, mainly spare milk, liquid sugar, and syrup tanks. Some of the delivery points could be gravity deliveries, so a non-pumping unit could be used. Let’s just say that the rates were very tempting…

moomooland:

windrush:
We were running tarmac up there so that a pad could be laid for the tankers to unload on, if anything broke down it was just dragged out of the way regardless as they couldn’t lay the stuff fast enough.Pete.

0They certainly laid some tarmac above Scammonden just off the A640, money was no object.

That was the section we supplied blacktop too, I think Skipton Rock quarry supplied most of it though as I only went once.

Pete.

Quite a few owner driver jumped on the bandwagon with the water movement hiring tanks from here there and everywhere thus neglecting their normal work and of course when it all ended some of them could’nt get their work back and went out of business. Sadler albeit quite a large tanker company put around 5 on it if I remember until it finished.

Getting ready to discharge at Scammonden

The crisis was covered in depth with the attached courtesy of Commercial Motor

Sniffy:
The crisis was covered in depth with the attached courtesy of Commercial Motor.

Thanks for posting.

The £4000 the vehicle earned per week is the equivalent of £7600 today.

Loftsome Bridge water treatment works, near Selby,

Stanfield:
Quite a few owner driver jumped on the bandwagon with the water movement hiring tanks from here there and everywhere thus neglecting their normal work and of course when it all ended some of them could’nt get their work back and went out of business. Sadler albeit quite a large tanker company put around 5 on it if I remember until it finished.

Is this the Sadler you are talking about John ? :unamused:

Click on page once.

Yes Dean that is SADLER Tankers from Thornaby and Oldham but the Atkis had all been replaced long before the water operation started and had been replaced over time by DAF / Scania & ERF units.

Blackpool Van Transport even had a couple of tankers on the job which were both brand new at the time and hired from Dennison Trailers.

BW.jpgThe scene at Booth Wood Reservoir when a water supply pipe broke loose.

We had two trucks running on this job 24/7 towing tanks we imported from Holland.
Made some good money at it too.

Not only this but we got on to Yorkshire Waters go to list and did some other relief jobs taking water from Leeds to Skipton.

It would be around that time the CEO of the newly privertised “Yorkshire Water PLC” gave himself a £6M bonus after the company declared losses of around £150M. There was a company guy at Scammendam reckoned that the whole M62 operation wasn’t even keeping up with the leaks in the water system.