Managing the logisitics of a beet harvest

摘要

Once sugar beet has been harvested, it's handed over to the hauliers whose job is to transport it from field to factory. Peter Hill describes one operator's approach. It's the penultimate day of a longer-than-usual sugar beet campaign, one that started in mid-September and finally drew to a close in mid-March. Juggling mobile phone and radio hand-piece, Europe's biggest sugar beet haulier Roger Warnes responds to another of the regular and frequent calls he gets from a driver announcing his lorry's discharged its load and is ready to collect another. He responds after a brief. thoughtful pause: "Would you go to Manor Farm, North Wold, please," he says. If it's a new location for the driver, this quiet, polite but purposeful response will be followedby clear "tum left here, turn right there" directions. There's no map to refer to, other than the one Mr Wames pictures in his head, complete with the whereabouts of his trucks and the precise location of the eight clamps they have been loading from that day.