Swadlincote is one of the largest towns in the UK without a railway station, so nothing comes in or out of it except by road. Two roads do most of that work. The A511 runs past between Burton upon Trent and Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where it meets the dual-carriageway A42. The A514 starts in Derby, crosses the Trent over the narrow, historic Swarkestone Bridge, meets the A511 and carries on through the town before finishing at the A444 just to the west. Both are largely single carriageway, and that shapes what a breakdown here involves.
One lane each way
A tractor unit or a loaded rigid that stops on a single-carriageway road can't tuck itself away on a hard shoulder. It blocks a lane, traffic squeezes past, and the driver is standing much closer to moving vehicles than they would be on a motorway. So the first job is to get them out of the cab on the side away from the traffic, with hazards on. Then ring 01332 916028.
When you call, say which road the vehicle is on and which way it was heading, and give us a fixed point we can find. In Swadlincote that might be the district (Church Gresley, Woodville, Midway, Newhall or Castle Gresley), the retail park, or a road name like Sir Herbert Wragg Way. Add what the vehicle is, whether it is loaded, and what it did before it stopped: lost air, lost power, made a noise, filled the mirrors with smoke.
Repair first, recovery when needed
We set off to fix the vehicle where it is. Air leaks and damaged couplings, trailer brakes that won't release, electrical and lighting faults, flat batteries, tyre damage and fuel problems can very often be dealt with at the roadside by a technician who came prepared, and a repair there gets the load moving again the same day. If a repair can't be done safely, or the fault is beyond what the side of the road allows, we recover the vehicle with equipment suited to its weight.
Recovered vehicles go to our workshop at Calke Mill Farm, Melbourne, or to your own premises if your fitters would rather take it from there. You hear what failed and whether the repair is permanent before the technician leaves, so nobody discovers later that it was only a get-you-home fix.
The breakdown line takes calls at every hour, every day of the year. It is the same number for an artic on the A511, a coach in the town centre, a van that won't start on one of the town's industrial estates, or a specialist vehicle out at Overseal or Hartshorne. You don't need to be a contract customer to use it.
