CCC drivers in the pink!

A bold statement about female drivers is being made by Merseyside waste haulage specialist City Centre Commercials (CCC) with the purchase of a pair of DAF tippers painted in a vivid pink!

Managing director Pat Beckett says that giving their two female drivers – Susan Cubley and Sarah Farragher – their own distinctive pink trucks makes it very plain that the tough world of tippers isn’t an exclusively male preserve.

“Finding and keeping high calibre drivers can be a problem these days,” she says. “And in Susan and Sarah we’ve got two excellent drivers. So giving them a top-of-the-range truck like the DAF CF85 and painting the truck in a colour that people associate with femininity, could help encourage other women to think about truck driving as a career.

“It’s an interesting and well paid job and with modern trucks it’s not as physically demanding as it was in the past. Sophisticated modern trucks sometimes need the light touch that a woman can bring, especially in tricky off-road site conditions, where these two trucks will often operate.”

Susan Cubley, who got her new truck in June, says that she’s delighted with it. “It looks fabulous and drives superbly,” she says. “And it definitely attracts a lot of attention, with people pipping their horns when I’m out on the road. It’s very well set up with a comfortable driving position from which all the instruments are easy to see and controls easy to reach.

“When you’re on the road it’s very quiet inside the cab even under full power. The interior is nicely finished and easy to keep clean, which is important on the sort of dirty jobs I’m often on. And there’s plenty of storage space for my belongings and the Personal Protective Equipment that you need on site. Overall it’s a very pleasant environment in which to work.”

The new DAFs are 32 tonne CF85 eight-wheelers fitted with 14 cubic metre, double-skinned Streamline II bodies by Abba Commercial Bodies of St Helens. Their main work will be site clearance and general ‘muckshifting’, along with the delivery of recycled aggregrates throughout the North West. They’re expected to cover between 60,000 and 70,000 kilometres a year.

Susan’s DAF has got plenty of power from the 12.9 litre MX engine, which is rated at 360 bhp (265 kW) at 1900 rpm to give a very adequate 11.25 bhp/tonne of power to weight ratio at 32 tonnes. There’s lots of torque too, at 1775 Nm across a power band from 1000 to 1410 rpm. Combined with a mechanical diff lock, this enables the DAF to get cope effortlessly with all site and load conditions.

The new DAFs also meet the highest environmental standards. CCC have gone straight to the Euro V emissions level, over two years ahead of its introduction. “We’re in the waste recycling business and so we need to be satisfying the highest standards in terms of environmental performance from our trucks,” says Pat Beckett.

CCC began in business over 25 years ago and today runs a fleet of 44 trucks including roll-on-off vehicles, skip loaders and tippers. They have waste transfer stations at Kirby, which is one of the largest in the North West, and at Garston. In excess of 70 per cent of the materials collected are processed for recycling, the majority of this being crushed stone for roadbuilding.

DAF dealer North West Trucks of Huyton supplied the two CF85s and will service them under a three year Repair & Maintenance contract.