A ‘Tebay Services designed for HGV drivers’ is how the owner of a new truckstop on the M6 near Gretna describes his ambitions for his eight-acre site, which is undergoing further development.
Rob Little, a haulier himself, says that he wants to elevate the stopover experience for truck drivers with his Junction 45 site which opened in January.
A small 450sq ft unbranded shop selling hot food to go, Costa coffee, snacks, truck care products and toiletries, offers bacon baps, for instance, made with quality cuts and local ingredients for £3.95.
Home-cooked, healthier meals will be on the menu when a restaurant opens at the stop in the coming weeks, and there are individual ensuite style shower rooms with a wash basin and toilet. He also plans to introduce an internal laundrette with Miele washing and drier machines.
Little also claims to have installed the fastest fuel pumps – Tatsuno equipment – dispensing 180 litres of diesel a minute. The six diesel and three adblu pumps are unbranded, and will eventually be put under canopy. And most fuel cards, with the exception of Shell and BP, are accepted at the location.
Currently the site has capacity for 150 trucks to park overnight for £24 within a fenced in area which is watched overnight by a security guard. But Little hopes to expand to 300 bays, and to eventually add a gym.
“The truck driver has been treated like the poor relation in the service station world,” says Little, who also owns Junction 45 haulage business with five tippers, and Harker Service Station on the A7 at Carlisle.
He says: “I wanted to raise the level a few grades above the normal. While of course, I am a business man wanting to make back the money I’ve invested, I am looking at everything through a truck driver’s eye.”
Around 60 drivers are typically parking overnight at Junction 45, which has a volume of 30,000 litres a day: a figure Little hopes to increase to 90,000 to 100,000 litres.
Little says that feedback has been exceptional, and that he is using social media to promote the differences at his truckstop. “Customers are saying ‘this is what we needed all along. Someone has given the time and money, and listened to what we want’.”
Junction 45 is the fifth truckstop that Colin Duckworth from Carlin Marketing has designed, working on this occasion with JHA Architecture in Manchester.
