LORRY DRIVER KATY SHOWS HER TRUE GRIT
AT a petite five foot three, Katy Walsh doesn't exactly fit the stereotypical image of your average lorry driver, but what she lacks in stature she more than makes up for in grit and determination.
As one of the first females to ever drive a gritting lorry for DRD Roads Service, the 25-year-old was happy to take questions from a group of intrigued students at Dromore High School last Friday.
Although currently working as a Traffic Safety Control Officer on a major motorway project in Glasgow, Katy took time out to call into the school during a weekend break back home to her Edentrillick Road home outside Dromore.
And, while there, she shared some happy memories of gritting the district's roads, often in sub-zero temperatures late at night or early morning when most of us were still tucked up in bed asleep.
A former Methody pupil, she went on to complete a computer course at Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education (BIFHE), while all the time harbouring a driving ambition to be out on the open road.
"I had always been brought up with tractors and lorries and I had been driving around the fields at home from a very young age, so looking back on it, I suppose a career in driving wasn't that surprising," she said.
"However, other people were certainly surprised - shocked even - to see a 23-year-old female behind the wheel of a 28 tonne gritting lorry, but they soon got used to it!"
After working as a buyer for the Regional Supplies Service based at Belfast City Hospital and later as manager for a fire extinguisher company based in Dromore, Katy wanted to put her LGV Class 2 Rigid Lorry and LGV Articulated Class I licences to good use, and was soon looking around for opportunities for some heavy duty driving.
Her first job was driving a lorry with Roads Service based at Sprucefield and later when she joined Graham Highway Management Maintenance, she trained to drive a roadsweeper, gullysucker and cone lorry, as well as being on 24-hour emergency alert for car accidents or oil spillages which required immediate road attention.
glamorous
"It certainly wasn't very glamorous work and you would often get a call in the middle of the night if a road needed to be made safe after an accident, but I loved it," said Katy, who is now working with Highway Management Construction on the 18 km stretch of the M80 between Glasgow and Stirling.
The move came after she completed the Lantra Awards Scheme for Traffic Safety Control Officers and also the Traffic Management Foreman's Course - but she still misses her midnight and dawn outings in her beloved gritting lorry: "I just loved the freedom of getting into the lorry either late in the evening or early morning," she said.
"I found it to be a stress-free job - there's just you, the road, and of course some music on the radio to sing along to.
"The hours are anti-social, it can be extremely cold and it was hard work hosing down your vehicle after each use because of the corrosive nature of the salt, but I loved every minute of it."
Katy began to take on more traffic management duties when Graham HMM secured the contract for upgrade work on the M2.
As well as driving a cone lorry or setting out cones at crucial roadworks, she also learned Autocad skills, developing the computer-aided drawings needed for the practical work out on the road.
Her new role in the Glasgow project - a joint venture between Graham's, Farrans and German company, Bilinger Berger, involves driving around 180 miles per day - "in a jeep, not a lorry!" - making sure safety procedures are being adhered to and ensuring all hazard cones are no less than 1.2 metres away from live traffic.
"The shifts are long, motorists honk their horns at you and if you are moving dozens of cones about each day, your arms can ache, but it's great being involved in such a massive project and seeing it all come together," she adds.
"I am enjoying getting to know Glasgow, but when I return home when the project is complete in 2011, I definitely want to get behind the wheel of a gritting lorry again.
"I can't really think what else I would rather be doing, apart from driving a bus - and I am already looking into getting my licence for that."
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Dromore
Wednesday 23 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 6 C to 19 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South east
