Meet the fleet: what’s actually pulling the grit round your site

When we talk about “gritting your site”, it’s easy to picture something vague and faintly municipal — a lorry, maybe, somewhere in the distance. So this week we thought we’d show you exactly what turns up outside your gates at 2am: the Vale TS1700 salt spreader, the workhorse behind every one of our rounds.

What it actually is

The TS1700 is a purpose-built gritter, towed rather than self-driving — which sounds like a small distinction but makes a real difference to how we operate. We pull ours with Land Rover Discovery 4s or similar 4x4s: proper four-wheel drives, heavy-duty enough to handle a loaded spreader and still get into sites that would stop a normal van dead when conditions turn, which is rather the point on the nights we’re actually needed. Each TS1700 carries a 1.2m³ mild steel hopper (extendable with bolt-on sides to take it further), holding around two tonnes of salt at a time. That’s enough to cover a serious amount of ground before anyone needs to head back and reload.

How the spreading actually works

Inside each hopper, twin stainless steel augers — Vale call the design “POZI-FEED” — feed salt down to a hydraulically driven spinning disc at the back. That disc is what throws the salt out sideways across the road or car park, and the width it covers is adjustable from a tight 1.8 metres (handy for a narrow service road or a footpath) right up to 8 metres for a big, open car park, all controlled from valves our drivers can adjust on the move.

Built to survive outdoor life

These aren’t delicate bits of kit. The steelwork is blast-cleaned and finished in a zinc-rich powder coat before the final polyester top coat goes on, specifically because they spend their working lives surrounded by corrosive salt in all weathers. Twin braked axles and proper road-going wheels mean they travel safely behind the towing vehicle between sites.

A fleet that’s always (almost) brand new

We run six TS1700s across our rounds, and we replace one every year — so the whole fleet cycles through on a six-year rota, and there’s never a unit much older than that still in service. Gritters have a hard life sitting in salt and all weathers, and a spreader that’s seized up or spreading unevenly on the one night it’s needed most isn’t a saving at all. They are all serviced annually and have daily checks when gritting. Our newest arrival just came off the lorry (our unofficial quality inspector insisted on supervising the unloading — see photo), joining the rest of the fleet across our 4 depots.

And for the tighter spots: a spreader built for multi-storeys

Not every site suits a trailer towed by a Land Rover — a multi-storey car park, for one, needs something that can turn tightly, fit through a low barrier, and still get salt underneath parked cars rather than just down the middle of the aisle. For those we use a Logic GDS150, a smaller trailed spreader that tows behind a quad, ATV or similar compact vehicle and can direct salt left or right as it goes — exactly what’s needed to treat a cramped deck properly rather than just the bits a full-size gritter could reach.

And for pavements and anywhere no vehicle can go: by hand

Below that again, each of our four depots keeps its own set of hand and push spreaders, for anywhere a vehicle simply can’t reach — pedestrian walkways, ramps, the awkward corner everyone forgets about until someone slips on it. It’s the least glamorous part of the kit list, but on a lot of sites it covers exactly the bit of ground that matters most.

Why this is worth knowing as a customer

You don’t need to know any of this to get a good gritting service — that’s rather the point of using a contractor. But it’s useful context for two things that come up a lot: why we ask for a marked-up site plan (we need to know early on whether your site needs the open-ground spreader, the GDS150 for a multi-storey, or hand spreading for pedestrian areas), and why keeping a young, well-maintained fleet is part of what you’re actually paying for when frost hits every site on our books on the same night.

The bottom line

It’s not glamorous kit, but it’s the kit that keeps your car park walkable at 7am. Six TS1700s on a yearly replacement cycle, a Logic GDS150 for multi-storeys, hand spreaders at every depot for the bits nothing on wheels can reach, and Land Rovers heavy enough to tow the lot through whatever the weather throws at them — that’s what’s behind the service, whatever this winter does.

Get in touch for a no-obligation quote

Sources

• Vale Engineering (York) Ltd, TS1700 Tractor-Towed Salt Spreader (Gritter)
• Logic, GDS150 Trailed ATV Salt Spreader
• Fleet facts (vehicle count, replacement cycle, towing vehicles, depot count, hand spreaders) supplied by Catharine.