Police use popular truck stop to launch lorry crime crackdown

North Yorkshire Police has announced it will be running a new series of monthly meetings with lorry drivers at Barton truck stop, off the A1 near Scotch Corner, which tens of thousands of heavy goods vehicles travel through every day.

The initiative was pioneered by police in Germany a decade ago and is known as a Stammtisch, meaning get-together.

With spiralling fuel prices sparking a worrying rise in drivers being targeted by thieves and growing concerns that rogue Eastern European haulage operators are forcing their drivers to stay behind the wheel for potentially lethal amounts of time, North Yorkshire Police has now decided to introduce it in the county.

“When you talk to lorry drivers, a lot of them spend most of their working week away from home,” said Sergeant John Lumbard of North Yorkshire Road Traffic Police.

“As a road user they are a community within themselves and they are very nomadic.

“There is a high number of lorry drivers in North Yorkshire because of the A1 and it is an area where a lot of drivers come and park up.

“This will be an opportunity for us to approach drivers and build bridges with them.

“Due to increases in the price of diesel, vehicles have been targeted by thieves and organised crime groups.

“They park up somewhere at night or even in truck stops and wake to find the fuel has been siphoned off.

“There have been incidents reported of truck drivers being threatened by people who wake them up – they are isolated in the middle of the night and do not have an option.”

It is hoped the new meetings, which will take place on the first Wednesday of every month, will also establish a network of informants on the roads to report illegal operators.

There has been a noticeable rise in trucks from Eastern Europe coming to England with their tachographs – devices which record speed and the number of hours worked – being falsified so they can keep going beyond European Union safety regulations.

Sgt Lumbard said: “We are hoping to build up an exchange where we will be told about rogue road haulage operators. Now tachographs are digital and certain operators will try and alter the signal so it doesn’t correctly record what drivers are doing.”

Since the Stammtisch was successfully piloted by German police in 2000, the practice has been embraced by police forces across Europe.

A number of UK forces now also run their own get-togethers.

The Barton truck stop is seen as such a vital area because it is where all trucks pass through before heading out to Scotland or the North East, and is regularly used as a place to stay the night.

Geoff Dunning, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, has welcomed the new initiative.

“The Barton truck stop is a very important facility in the north of England”, he said.

“It is very good to see North Yorkshire Police taking up this programme.

“We want to see as much communication between truck drivers and police as possible.

“There has been a steady growth in cases of fuel being stolen from vehicles on the road side or in truck stops – it is a big problem and a growing one.

“Rogue foreign haulage operators are something we have been dealing with for a while.

“There have been a number of fatal incident over the years where drivers have been found to have far exceeded the hours they are allowed to drive.”

Road traffic police officers and a mobile police station will be in place to meet drivers at the Barton truck stop between 9am and 2pm today.