3663 First for Foodservice has donated an 18-tonne Scania truck to the relief work organisation Reform Corporation for use in literacy and feeding programmes in Africa. The vehicle will be loaded with educational materials from the UK and distributed to African countries to help educate people and increase the number of textbooks and other educational materials reaching the region. The temperature-controlled vehicle will then be used to help local people transport food in Nigeria. This is the second truck 3663 has donated over the past two years. Fred Barnes, chief executive of 3663, said: “The truck will make a tangible difference to local communities’ lives – improving their standard of living through the food and educational materials that will be distributed. We normally recycle spare parts of end-of-term trucks but we saw the work that our first donated truck has done, so it was an easy decision to support Reform Corporation.”
Coventry firm ByBox has helped raise £1,250 towards the building of a local baby hospice. Its recent annual charity football tournament helped raise funding for Zoe’s Place, a baby hospice which will offer 24-hour palliative respite and terminal care for babies and young children, helping to ease the pressure of responsibilities on the parents within the Coventry and Warwickshire area. Employees from ByBox’s national distribution centres were encouraged to attend and enter a team in the tournament, which was hosted by Nuneaton Town FC. Each player paid £10 to play and a raffle was held with all prizes donated by ByBox employees.
New Holland, the global agricultural and construction equipment maker, commissioned Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL) to paint five of its new compact tractors pink as part of the equipment maker’s drive to raise funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Australia. The WWL team dissembled, painted and reassembled the tractors at its specialist technical services facility in Port Kembla, the closest specialist industrial port to Sydney, Australia. The National Breast Cancer Foundation will receive a $1,000 (AUSD) (£516) donation from New Holland for each tractor sold.
Bill Thomas, transport manager with Transline, has launched a campaign for Wootton Bassett to be awarded a royal prefix. Bill, a navy veteran, believes Wootton Bassett should be renamed Royal Wootton Bassett after the tributes shown by the town’s population since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001. The town is close to RAF Lyneham, where deceased soldiers are repatriated after their death. As they pass through the town, residents line the streets to pay their respects. After eight servicemen were repatriated in one day in July, the 62-year old drafted a letter to the Queen to request the award. The Queen replied commending his efforts but saying the decision lay in the hands of the Prime Minister. Bill, who is waiting for a reply from Gordon Brown, said: “The momentum is building. We’ve got a big following on Facebook and online and I hope someone like Jeremy Clarkson will get involved.”
Pall-Ex has hosted its eighth annual charity golf event at De Vere Mottram Hall in Cheshire and raised over £1,400 for the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. Fifty-five golfers from the network attended the fundraiser to compete against each other in a round of golf. The event was sponsored by Deker Trailers, Outsourcery, and Kuehne + Nagel. Winners on the day were Outsourcery who won best team, and Mark Sanders of Deker Trailers who won best individual.
Jon Sleightholme, ex-England and Northampton Saints rugby player, has led a team of 13 cyclists on an eight-day, marathon over more than 1,000 miles to raise funds for Autism Concern. Jon and the team cycled from Northampton to Northampton’s Twin Towns – Poitiers in France, and then on to Marburg in Germany. The team used Aeromark’s Aerotrack vehicle tracking system, which fitted under the saddle of one of the team members, to track the journey via the Twin Towns Challenge web site. Roger Marks, Aeromark’s managing director, said: “Accurate live updates were taken every ten minutes to show the progress the riders were making from the moment they set off from Northampton.”
FedEx UK’s director of Supply Chain Services UK, Allan Blakeley, has carried out a 463-mile walk via 15 FedEx stations over 21 days to raise more than £30,000 for learning disability charity Mencap. Blakeley wanted to raise money for the charity as his son Kieran has autistic tendencies and learning disabilities. He started on 5th September and went from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Launceston, which required him to cover an average of 22 miles per day. Blakeley said: “I want to give something back to a charity which is very close to my heart.”
