Hi guys.
Hope all is well. Some of you may remember a post I done earlier this year when I was driving for Vitacress (Vitacress Blog). This time around I thought I’d do the same but for Keystone Distribution in Basingstoke. For those who don’t know, Keystone delivers exclusively to McDonalds stores around the UK.
Anyway, here it goes…On the 6th of January I was scheduled to be a spare driver at Keystone in Basingstoke, starting at 0600. I set my alarm for 0500 and got up and had a shower. After my shower I looked outside my bedroom window to see how much snow was covering my car. As you can see, it wasn’t great, but wasn’t too bad. My car is the maroon Volvo in the bottom left of the picture and at 2200 the previous night, it was clear of snow.
So at 0545 I started her up and drove to work arriving a few minutes early. Being a spare, I was expecting to sit around for about 30 minutes before going out on a run…but no, as soon as I got in I was given a run which should have started at 0500. The run consisted of 3 drops…Calcot Savacentre, Reading Oxford Road and Reading Oracle.
I picked up my paperwork, filled it out and went outside to find my vehicle in the yard. After doing my walk around checks I prepared to leave the well maintained yard.
I left the yard at 0630 and headed around the Ring Road. I was to go up the A33 towards Reading and head west along the M4 to Junction 12. The A33 wasn’t that bad to drive on, until I got to my first roundabout at Sherbourne Park, where it was rather icy.
After some ‘careful’ driving, I eventually got stuck behind Captain Slow 
As with many A roads, it eventually turned into a fairly nice dual carridgeway, but I was still stuck behind the same car doing a stupidly slow speed.
Eventually I was able to leave Captain Slow behind and I headed west across the M4. I came off at Junction 12 and headed up the A4 to the next roundabout, turning left. Once off the roundabout, I had a look at the car park I was to park the truck to do the delivery…I wasn’t optimistic. My time of arrival was 0715
For people who know…Our McDonalds trucks don’t take the normal service road that every other store has, we have to use the small winding road into the main car park. So I turned onto the road in question, of which I was the first vehicle to use it. The road has an uphill gradient and I made some progress, but the inevitable was to happen…I got stuck. But alas, I wasn’t the only one…two other lorries, one of which was from the Sainsbury’s depot next door to Keystone, and a car were also stuck. As I exited my vehicle, two women who worked next door at the boots store proceeded to show me their support giving me many “awwwwww’s” and “poor you’s” 
I went inside the store to tell the manager that I was stuck. He offered me a coffee and I explained the situation to him. Over the next hour we tried various things to get me moving…using a shovel, giving it some power and even putting cardboard underneath the tires…all to no avail. I even tried reversing out but that still didn’t work.
Remember the Sainsbury’s driver?..well, during all of this he managed to get his vehicle to his yard and had done his delivery. When he finished he parked on the service road for his break and tried helping me to get me moving. He was another driver from the same agency I’m with. It was all looking good, he put traction control on and used the shovel a bit, but after 45 mins, he had to leave for the depot and I was actually a little further back than when I started (I wasn’t the only one driving).
Eventually I was left all alone with just determination and a shovel. I started digging myself out relentlessly, being egged on by the two Boots ladies whilst all the while the McDonalds staff just stood there like tools. after a short time I had made quite a bit of progress and made it around the top corner and I surveyed the destruction I had left behind.
Shortly after the last pic, I got around the corner to a place where I could do the delivery…I told the manager either his guys dig a place for me to put the cages somewhere or I’d dig myself out and Foxtrot Oscar with their stock still on board. Needless to say, they wanted the stuff and so they dug for themselves. I started the delivery at about 1015
With the delivery complete at 1110, I bid farewell to the two Boots ladies, who called me their hero 
Just a shame they were too old for me and I wasn’t single and available to meet their ■■■■■■ needs.
So with that I left Calcot and headed up the A4 into Reading towards the infamous Oxford Road. The A4 into Reading wasn’t in too bad a state, but as usual, it was slow drivers that held me up. I finally arrived underneath the railway bridge and the Aldi/Lidl car park at 1135. Looking at their car park I decided to reverse to the delivery point, (most drivers drive to it and turn around), knowing I’d get stuck however I tried to get to it.
As above, I got stuck trying to reverse, blocking the Aldi/Lidl delivery point, not that they had any deliveries that day. Two asian guys from McDonalds came out with two shovels and started to help me dig myself out a nice reversing path. These two guys were great…really fun to dig with and they kept throwing shovel loads of snow at each other unexpectedly. Unfortunately because of the first store, my break was due. So at 1200 I took 30 minutes, although I decided to use the time to help with the digging.
Eventually we managed to dig the truck out and using lots of the automatics power, I floored it in a straight line to the delivery point. As you can see from a picture below, whilst this was happening, a large chunk of tree had fallen down just before I came to a stop…had it fallen 5 minutes later, it could have landed on me 
Anyway…work must go on…so I carried on with the delivery and eventually managed to get away at 1345, only after being offered a free meal of any choice. (I only had a double cheeseburger though).
So off I drove towards the Oracle shopping centre. I don’t really know Reading that well so kind of got a bit lost. I pulled over and a very helpful woman pointed me in the direction of the Oracle service yard…
See that bar in the picture above that tells you if your vehicle is too high?..yeah, I hit it…lots of people looked at me 
I went down the ramp and then spoke to the guy on the other end of the phone thing. He told me to go onto bay 5 or 6 on the right as you enter the yard. So with that information, I did just that.
At 1410 I finally backed onto Bay 6.
Did you know that every last drop of McDonalds milk comes from British farms■■?..interesting. Every last drop of my … comes from inside my scrot - lurvly! Anyway…because there wasn’t any snow or ice to contend with, the delivery at the Oracle only took 30 minutes, so at 1440 I left. (more like 1450, 10 mins for paperwork). Once I did start to move and I exited the service yard, I was confronted with this bridge leading back onto the towns roads.
Needless to say, the pedestrians didn’t care about me and walked everywhere…but me being stubborn, I just carried on with the attitude of “if you get in my way, you’ll probably give me traction”. Trying to get out of Reading was a chore as well…The signs, for anyone who knows, are FUBAR’d…signs tell you to go straight on when instead you should go right and things like that. In the end it led to to a sign that said “7.5t mgw - Weak Bridge”.
When I got to the bridge I was in a pickle about what to do…I couldn’t turn around or I’d have got stuck blocking the entire road…But my saving grace came when I saw a little sign saying “except buses”. So a little bit of maths…A double decker bus empty weighs 12tonnes, it can hold about 90 passengers, with every 15 passengers averaging 1ton…so that would mean potentially a double decker weighing up to 18 tonnes, plus a bit more could safely go over the bridge…I on the other hand only had a few empty cages on, so I weighed about 17 tonnes. With that I went over it
Soon after, I got back onto the A33 and headed towards Basingstoke. It started snowing quite heavily again and the road was looking pretty much the same as in the morning.
It was slow progress back to Basingstoke but eventually I made it. Again I got back onto the ring road and followed the signs for Houndsmills and back to the depot. As I approached the depot I could see just how much of the snow hadn’t been cleared from the entrance road.
After turning into the depots entrance road at 1600, I went down to the security hut, handed over my swipe card to open the barrier and went into the yard. Usually when we arrive back in the yard, we have to unload any cardboard collections and then leave the truck by the pumps to be fueled. Today though, I hadn’t picked up any cardboard and the shunter asked me to just wack it onto a bay. So I did.
I then finished off my paperwork and went into the Transport office for the journey debrief, finally finishing at 1630.
That’s it ladies and gents…I’m sorry it went on for so long, longer than intended…but I hope you’ve enjoyed the read and the pictures.
Adam
