BATA

from DAF Driver Magazine Winter 2021/22 - Issue 27

Army T244

BATA TRIDEM

(AND LIKED ‘EM!)

Reproduced with the kind permission of: Bulk & Tipper magazine Words: Jon Harle Photographs: Karl Hopkinson

Established in 1894, BATA was set up as a co-operative to support Yorkshire farmers. Over 125 years later, it’s still doing the same job, and the movement of goods is still an essential element of the operation. Jon Harle has been to meet Transport Manager Richard Burley, and to see the latest DAF ‘tridem’ bulker to join the fleet.

When you visit the premises of BATA at Amotherby, a small village near Malton in North Yorkshire, you realise that this is an organisation that has become an integral part of the region’s farming community. Over the years, its orange vehicles have become as much a part of the Yorkshire countryside as Wensleydale sheep and dry stone walls. Indeed, you have to go back to the end of the 19th century to discover the roots of the group.

It was established by Hugh Charles Fairfax-Cholmeley, the Squire of Brandsby, and a well-known social reformer. He realised the importance of education and the application of science to agriculture, and the need to modernise every aspect of rural life. He renovated cottages and farms on his estate, and built the Brandsby village hall and bath house. Then, in 1894, he set up the Brandsby Dairy Association as a farmer’s co-operative. It was a way of selling produce and buying fertiliser and seed, but in the early 1900s, the co-operative was renamed the Brandsby Agricultural Trading Association, or BATA. Transport of goods to and from markets was an important aspect of the organisation. Horses and carts were superseded by steam lorries and petrol trucks. The Squire even had planning permission for a light rail system to connect to the North Eastern Railway line between York and Pickering, but it was never built, due to the interruption of the First World War.

Spin the clock forward more than a century, and the original structure of the farmer’s co-operative remains in place today. BATA now offers products and services that support the livelihood and lifestyle of thousands of people who live and work in rural Yorkshire, ranging from the manufacture and delivery of livestock feed to the supply of heating oil to the sale of everything from animal shampoo to zinc tablets through a chain of eleven Country Stores. And transport is still a vital aspect of the enterprise.

Richard Burley has been with BATA for 27 years. He started as a tanker driver before moving into the office in 1999, and taking over as transport manager 10 years later. Despite his long service with the business, and it’s even longer history, there’s still confusion over how to pronounce it. “Officially it’s B.A.T.A.,” he tells me, “but different people pronounce it Barter, Batter, or even Bater!” What’s not in doubt is that Burley is part of a long tradition. Even the main offices are located in a restored mill building. “We used to have our main offices at Malton, but we were flooded out twice 20 years ago, so the decision was taken to move here to Amotherby. There’d been a fire at the old mill many years previously. In fact, if you look at the brick walls in the boardroom, which is on the top floor, you can see where the bricks are still scorched and charred.”

Next to the old mill is the ‘new’ mill where animal feed is produced and stored before distribution. Also on the same site is the warehouse for storage of goods sold through the Country Stores, and 100 metres down the road is the fuel and gas distribution depot. A fleet of 37 trucks, including bulkers, tankers and curtainsiders, is kept busy supplying their country stores and the region’s farms, businesses, and homes.

“We’ve got something like forty thousand product lines in the warehouse here for supplying the Country Stores,” Burley explains. “Think of anything you’d ever need on a farm, then double it! I still walk through the warehouse and see things I didn’t even know we sold! We’ve got curtainsiders delivering to the stores once or twice a week, as well as tankers delivering oil and gas, and supplying two BATA petrol stations. It’s a big team effort with over 200 employees across the group, many of whom have been here for years. But animal feed production is a big part of our business. Most of the time we’re delivering the finished product, so raw materials come in here from our suppliers. But they tend to have their own vehicles, so we don’t get involved with that aspect so much. Occasionally, if we get short in the mill, we can send out our vehicle to pick up a load rather than waiting for their own transport to become available. We might go and get Wheatfeed from a supplier in Driffield, or soya or sunflower from Hull. We’ve got a Fruehauf ribsided ‘bathtub’ trailer we use for that. But primarily we’re taking out the finished product from our mill. All our bulkers have to be UFAS-registered (Universal Feed Assurance Scheme) who’s standards we’re audited on every year.”

The fleet used to be predominantly Foden, but when they stopped production, Burley says BATA had to look elsewhere. “My predecessor had a good relationship with Parsons at Hartlepool, who were the Foden dealers. They then became Hino dealers and we got four of them, but they weren’t the most popular with the drivers. We then got an MAN four-wheeler tanker, which we’ve still got, although it’s about to be replaced. But it was a good little truck. On the back of that we got three more, but then we fell foul of the Euro 5 EGR cooler issue that MAN had. It was at that time that we started talking to Richard Avery from Imperial Commercials in Hull, what’s now Motus Commercials, and we bought our first DAF. It did the job, the drivers liked it, and we’ve still got it. We bought another one in 2013, and our association with DAF grew from there. Over the years we’ve developed a good relationship with Richard at Motus, and that’s been very important, because he understands the demands on our vehicles and has helped tailor the chassis to meet our needs.”

Top: Barley samples record the crop origins Above: Another load being signed off Right: BATA’s CF FAW features double drive and lift and steer rear axle

In 2012, Richard Burley was keen to address a problem that many bulk operators were facing. “The problem we all face is that vehicles are getting bigger, but the places we deliver to aren’t. There are lots of little farms up on the moors where getting in and out is a big issue with a feed bulker. But the six-wheelers can’t get enough payload on. The tridem configuration gives us the best of both worlds. You get the extra payload, and the double drive of an eight-wheeler, but because of the two steering axles you also get the manoeuvrability of a six-wheeler. The rear axle is positive steered, so you get a much tighter turning circle than on a conventional eight-wheeler. At the time, the only manufacturer offering that configuration was Volvo, so we got one of them, and were very pleased with it.

“In 2015 I got a DAF FAQ, which was a tridem again, but was only an 8x2. It had three steering axles, because the second and fourth axles were lift and steer axles. It could get in just about anywhere, but it only had the single drive axle, which was a problem up the hills in bad weather, so that’s gone elsewhere. In 2018, I bought a Renault tridem 8x4 with the same configuration as the Volvo, because DAF still weren’t doing an 8x4 version. They were a bit late to the party with the FAW, which is the new DAF we’ve just taken delivery of with the two drive axles, and the lift and steer rear axle.”

Driver, Dave Fairbairn, has been impressed with his new tridem. “I’ve been very pleased with it,” he tells me

“THE DOUBLE DRIVE IS BRILLIANT, PARTICULARLY IN THE BAD WEATHER WE HAD AFTER CHRISTMAS.”

as he climbs down from the cab after a day’s work. “The double drive is brilliant, particularly in the bad weather we had after Christmas. The Volvo would understeer going into corners, particularly if it was wet or if the front compartment was empty, but the DAF handles the bad weather much better. The only thing I sometimes miss is a manual gearbox, particularly when hitting a sudden hill, which we often get around the moors. You can’t skip a couple of gears with the automatic box. And the fuel tank is a bit bigger than we need. We’re never more than couple of hours away from base, so I usually only put about 100 litres in to keep the tare weight down. But overall I’m very pleased with it. And the seat’s brilliant!”

Burley grins as Fairbairn mentions the automatic gearbox. “The trucks are pretty well all automatics now,” he admits. “It’s something that’s changed in the last few years. You used to have to specify an automatic, but now it’s completely reversed and you have to specify a manual box if you want one.

Choosing the right feedstock

BATA supplies oil and gas and operates two petrol forecourts There was a bit of resistance to the automatics to start with, but now younger lads coming in don’t know what to do with a gearstick!”

The new DAF is fitted with a Muldoon bulk blower, which is Burley’s body of choice these days for rigids and trailers. “We’ve developed a good relationship with Muldoons,” he says, “and our Renault tridem was fitted with a demountable vacuum system which attaches at the back of the truck if we need it. It means if the farmer wants feed moving, we can suck it out and back onto the lorry. You can even select which compartment you want to put it in. The bulkers are all fitted with five compartments, but two of the internal doors can be moved around depending on what quantities are required, so it’s not unusual for a driver to leave the yard with five different delivery addresses.”

There are currently 37 trucks in the BATA fleet. In addition to the three tridems, Burley also operates two other conventional eight-wheeler bulkers – an MAN and a Scania. There are five tractor units on bulk deliveries, and tautliners, but Burley admits it hasn’t always been easy to get exactly what he wanted. “We had two mid-lift tractor units, but we wanted to switch to tag axles. Because of the nature of what we do, we don’t need big sleeper cabs. DAF’s CF is the cab size of choice, but it was difficult to find a second-hand one in the tag axle configuration. We found a couple of Scanias, and bought them to tide us over, then bought two brand new DAFs in the last couple of years. Apart from the five bulkers, and the five artics, we’ve also got 11 rigid oil tankers and six rigid LPG tankers, as well as 10 rigid curtainsiders. Nowadays we tend to buy new, but we don’t bother with R&M [repair and maintenance] contracts, because we’ve got our own workshops here. A lot of what we do involves specialist equipment, bulkers and tankers, so having our own garage means we can check that equipment at the same time as we carry out the regular maintenance inspections. It’s important to get them repaired and back out again as quickly as possible.

“We’ve found DAFs to be a good platform, whatever you put on the back,” Burley continues. “They’re good on fuel, and the drivers like them. Similarly, we tend to stick to Muldoon on the tipping side and Tasca for the tankers, although our next gas tanker is coming from Lakeland. The distinctive livery which completes the look of our vehicles is applied by a local company called Big Boolies. My only complaint with DAF is that, for some reason, it costs an arm and a leg to get a CF cab on a four-wheeler ADR chassis. Nobody seems to know why, so the four-wheeler tankers get an LF cab.”

Although BATA vehicles rarely travel more than a couple of hours from Amotherby, they face a huge variety of conditions, from busy dual carriageways across the flat Vale of York to gradients as steep as one-in-three on the North Yorkshire Moors. Burley tells me he always believes the vehicles should be on top of the job. “I don’t go for the biggest engine, but I don’t go for the smallest one either. For example, the tractors tend to be 480bhp, the six-wheeler rigids are 370s. But it’s important to get feedback from the drivers when we’re speccing a new truck. Over the years we’ve fine-tuned specifications, so when a driver suggests an improvement, next time we try to incorporate it into the order. A good example is work lights. A lot of what we do is during the darker months, when animals are in the sheds, but still need feeding, and when people want oil for central heating, so a decent rack of work lights on the back is important. We’ve developed a system with a couple of extra lights on the rear bumper, but also some set around the drive axle on a fan angle, but we’ve wired them up so they can be flicked on when going forward. Because sometimes getting out of a farm is as hard as getting in, so you need to see what you’re doing in the dark.”

Burley tells me that one of the challenges the company faces is developing a paperless ticketing scheme. “At the moment, once an order comes in, it goes onto the system, and is sent through to the mill manager and put into the production schedule. Helen Beeforth, who’s our agricultural transport planner, then schedules the delivery, puts the tickets into loads, then those tickets are sent to the weighbridge, so drivers see what they have to do. Weigh tickets are created for the loading process, one of which goes to the customer and the other to the accounts department. Similarly, Gary Grice, the fuel depot supervisor, does the planning for the tankers. We’re looking at ways of going paperless. It will happen, but we haven’t found the right system yet!”

One of Burley’s other frustrations is the weight of empty vehicles. “We live in a world where the materials used to build trucks are getting lighter and lighter. For example, all our bulkers are aluminium, and we haven’t got big sleeper cabs, but truck tare weights are staying the same because of the Euro 6 system we’ve got to carry. The holy grail is to get 18 tonnes on an eight-wheeler, but it’s a struggle.”

Judging by BATA’s experience, the tridem configuration is a useful tool in that search for the holy grail. The new DAF is the fourth tridem in the fleet. Burley approves, so do the drivers. So, yes, I guess it’s true to say they’ve tried’em, and they liked ‘em!