I am sure you will all know at least one person who has named their vehicle – and probably given them a bit of a jibe about the ridiculousness of naming an inanimate object, etc!
However, there is one group of folks who have vehicle naming down to a fine art and that is those who name our icy road saviours’ trucks – the Gritters!
According to The Standard in December 2022, National Highways – which manages the motorways and major A-roads in England – has 535 gritters based in 128 depots. Add to that the 230 gritters available in Scotland as reported by traffic.gov.scot in November 2024, and you are looking at quite a large fleet. Closer to home, in October 2024, East Sussex County Council reported we have 21 gritters which will treat all A and B roads and, dependant on the severity of the weather, some C roads – a total of 42% of all roads across our county.
First prize for naming Gritters would have to go to Scotland. They were the first to come up with this concept thanks to a competition run by road safety company Amey in 2020 which encouraged the public to name the all-important vehicles. Add to that, as a further service, at any given time during the winter snows and bad weather, you can check which Gritters are on which roads on the Scottish Government traffic web-site (https://www.traffic.gov.scot/gritter-tracker) and it makes for some great fun reading!
A list released in November 2024 shows the names of some 114 Scottish Gritters – and no! I am not going to record them all here as by the time I am done with those plus the others I’ve found, I will have filled up the whole newsletter!! For those interested, a quick visit to: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/scottish-gritter-names-list_uk) will give you the list – and a good giggle.
Suffice to say, these run from Kevin Fridges through Flower of Saltland, Lew-Ice Capaldi, Grittly Come Dancing, For Your Ice Only, and Spready Mercury, to Snowing Me, Snowing You.
Whilst lunching in Rye last week, I espied a Gritter outside the restaurant – obviously on its way to fill up for the evening – and noting it was named David Plowie, I realised that Gritter naming has now spread (pun intended!) as far south as our fair shores.
Some quick investigation showed that in 2013, the public were encouraged to contact Brighton and Hove City Council to give them some suggestions for naming their fleet of, then, seven Gritters.
Some of the East Sussex gritter names (mostly it seems submitted by various local schools) are: Salty McSaltface, Grit Expectations, Walter the Salter, Grittindor, 007:Licenced to Clear, Salteaser, The Grittalo, Veruca Salt, and my personal favourite, Ready Salted!
LR
