As we head into October, we are preparing our winter gritting teams for the winter gritting season ahead. As the largest winter gritting contractor in the south east of England we ensure all our winter gritting colleagues come together for annual refresher training to drive our winter gritting vehicles and listen to health and safety briefings. Clearway Gritting operates from the following seven depots:
St Albans – Hertfordshire
Milton Keynes - Buckinghamshire
Huntingdon – Cambridgeshire
Aylesbury – Buckinghamshire
Maldon - Essex
Barnet – North London
What is refresher gritting training?
Many of our Clearway Gritting colleagues will have undergone gritting training before but it’s important that we remind everyone about our procedures, routes and processes in the event that gritting is necessary.
Gritting Routes
Clearway Gritting works with private businesses including industrial parks, retail parks, supermarkets, universities and hospitals. Our focus is to make sure our client’s customers and staff can get to and from work. We prioritise clearing their car park, removing snow and laying grit on their footpaths and gritting private roads that link them with the main council gritted road system.
Snow ploughs and winter gritting vehicles
At our training sessions we allow our winter gritting crews to practice driving our snowploughs. We have a growing fleet of 74 snow ploughs and 36 spreaders that are located across our seven depots in the south east. We also have ten 7.5-ton lorries and two 18 ton lorries that are used to grit medium and large sites. All our winter gritting equipment is different, so it is important that our Clearway colleagues know how to work the machinery.
Some of the unique features of our winter gritting vehicles are listed below:
GPS tracking utilised
weigh cells for accurate salt measuring
Low throw spreading with ‘spargo’ in cab controls for accurate spreading
tablet device running bespoke control service software
Health and Safety training
Clearway Gritting trainers also discuss health and safety with our winter gritting teams so they know how to stay safe in bad weather.
Andrew Sherriff, Director, Clearway Gritting, St Albans, Hertfordshire said:
‘It is important that all our winter gritting colleagues come together before the winter gritting season starts for refresher training. We regularly service our vehicles and we use modern, reliable and well-maintained winter gritting equipment manufactured by Econ Engineering Limited who are the largest manufacturer of winter gritting and salt spreading vehicles in the UK. The winter gritting teams get to drive the vehicles so they can check that they are in good working order before they use them to grit private businesses. We will also review and familiarise our teams with all our winter gritting contracts so they are fully aware of winter gritting routes and individual client requirements. Clearway Gritting has achieved the ISO 18001 accreditations for health & safety so all our Clearway colleagues should be reassured that we operate safe and environmentally friendly winter gritting services that put their interests first. We discuss health & safety issues with the team as this is vital when you are working together in bad weather.’
