SPECIAL FEATURE
As winter bites, someone needs to grit and bear it.
Andy Leggat has been ploughing through Arctic conditions in a 26-tonne truck along with the rest of the South Lanarkshire cold snap squad.
The dad-of-three has been spreading salt throughout East Kilbride and was working overtime recently after heavy snow caused travel chaos.
When ‘snowmageddon’ hit, 200 council workers worked 12-hour shifts spreading 10,000 tonnes of salt with a fleet of 48 gritters, 43 snowploughs, one snowblower, 24 tractors and six loaders.
Andy, who has about six years’ experience, admits the East Kilbride and Avondale routes are among the hardest in the region.
But while it can feel like fighting a losing battle, they keep going 24 hours a day in order to beat the big freeze.
“It has been busy,” he says as the News visits the East Kilbride depot in College Milton for a ride in one of the gritters. “Really busy.
“It’s trying to keep on top of it. A lot of the time you can’t keep on top of the snow because you’re putting salt on top of heavy snow and you need traffic to drive across it to churn the salt up.
“Sometimes it can be too heavy and it doesn’t work – it’s as simple as that. We can plough and plough but it is hard going.
“You go and do one bit then come around and by the time you’ve done that it’s white again.
“You go down a road, turn on a roundabout and it’s white all the way back.”
Gritter drivers spend at least 12 hours on the road and up to 16 hours if on emergency call-outs.
They plough into walls of snow at 25 mph – or nervously travel along sheets of untouched ice. Focus
Andy admits the job can at times be a thankless task, particularly with the rise in popularity of social media and people posting their thoughts for the world to see.
He admits he enjoys being part of a great team who are “willing to cover and help out” – something not everybody gets to see as they battle the elements.
“Folk think you’re not doing anything,” he continues. “On social media you see it.
“People are asking where the gritter drivers are and we’re out constantly.”
Andy admits some residents are not slow in coming forward when angrily asking why some routes aren’t being treated.
“Some people say thanks and some people don’t,” he says.
“Some people get angry and ask you what you are actually doing. I had a woman this year get really angry with me about the pavements but this is just my job. I do what I’m told to do, the routes that I’m told to do.
“Everybody always thinks their road should be the road that gets done first – it’s always the way it is.
“We need to do the main routes first then we can go on to do the side roads.
“You need to look after the roads to schools and bus routes then once they are clear we can go on to the other roads.”
Gritting and clearing the roads is a dangerous job as well as an unsociable one with a personal cost.
Family man Andy admits it can be a struggle to fit in time with his daughter – although he was able to enjoy Christmas Day with his nearest and dearest.
“By the time I’m back in my house I haven’t seen my family in three days,” he reveals.
“It’s 12 hours and I’ve got a wee one. She’s in her bed by the time that I get in.”
As we pull out of the depot for a taster of their hard work, the screens in his cabin show the planned routes but most drivers, Andy says, know where they’re going.
He can also dictate how much grit is spread for more severe cases and manoeuvre the plough with a spinner to target some of the worst-hit areas.
Despite these “monster” vehicles, Andy feels gritters aren’t too hard to master with his 25 years of driving experience.
And even though shifts can be hard, Andy loves his job in trying to keep East Kilbride and Avondale moving.
“It is good,” he says. “You get a sense of achievement when you have cleared a street. You look back and think ‘I did that’.
“We’re an emergency service in this weather and that’s important.”
Everybody always thinks their road should be the road that gets done first...