1958 In the beginning....

Having grown up with a passion for 'Trucks, Lorries' or as my mother reckons, from my pushchair I used to point and shout 'Lol Lols', I suppose I was destined to get involved with heavy transportation at some point of my life.  Whoever would have guessed that you could combine those 'lol lols' with 'poo poos' and make a career!!!!

1975 Experience....

Leaving school with a bunch of 'fives' instead of a bunch of 'O levels' dead end jobs seemed to be the order. I took a job described as 'Tanker Mate' with my local Council (MVDC) and suddenley realised there was a whole lot more involved than just flushing the toilet.  
Over the next few years I became mates with many a tanker, in those days most Councils were still responsible for all their local sewers, blockages and tank emptying. 
With the achievment of passing my motor car driving test I was appointed some weeks with tanker drivers or drove a large Ford A Series van with what they called the sewer gang,
(A crew responsible for unblocking domestic and main sewers in the local area). 
  
Oh what a strange life I was leading, I was now a member of the notorious sewer gang and all my mates were tankers.

Slowly over these years the tanker fleet reduced in size from 6 to 2 as some sewer maintenance was being carried out by private contractors and cesspools/septic tanks were being emptied in the same way as now the Council had started to charge the customer for this service which encouraged private tankers companies to compete.

Yes, cesspools and septic tanks really were emptied FREE of charge prior to 1977.

1980 Breakthrough....

Passed my HGV class 3 driving test.... Classes 3, 2 and 1 in those days. Became the Councils main tanker driver.

1982 BLIP....

Fell out with my boss (Mr McKillock) not difficult to do. Left the Company and took on a local HGV driving job. During this period MVDC decided to drop the cesspool/septic tank emptying service to all of its customers, leaving approx 4000 properties locally, in the hands of private contractors.

1984 The second coming....

The dead end driving job became no better, even with the firm giving me a brand new truck.  I could not believe how much I missed being in the Shi.....fting game and with the knowledge of the Council now having given up their tanker service, the fact I knew the job and the Mole Valley area inside out, I decided to buy an old tanker and go door knocking. 

Response was promising so I quit my driving job, paid £1,400.00 of the banks money to a man for a tanker and took to the road on the 16th April 1984.

For the next five years, I concentrated on building up a database of domestic customers, I had to become a commercial vehicle mechanic (constant breakdowns) and by 1989 took the decision to purchase a larger second tanker and take on my first employee 'Good old Melvin' 
With this extra help and larger capacity tanker and my achievement of now passing my class 1 HGV driving test, we started to work for the Industrial sector and jobs came in from major Companies like A.R.C. (now Hanson Aggregates) and what I still call the breakthrough, The newly formed PLC Water Company ...Thames Water Utilities. 

This period also saw the introduction of Thames Water charging tanker companies for the reception of cesspool/septic tank waste, this had a knock on effect to all emptying charges and raised the awareness to many home owners that upgrades of their systems from old leaky cesspools to modern septic tanks or treatment plants, was the way forward.  

Reflecting on the above, we decided to offer a remedial service to customers on all sewage tank repairs and installations. Within three years pressures from emptying demands caused us to drop this installation and maintenance service and from there onwards we have used other companies for all remedial work. We do not and never have sub contracted this work to third partys but prefer to let the customer deal direct with the servicing company, (no mark-up on charges)

The company we recommend not only offers a very professional service but are very much at hand being based at Ockley, Dorking.

               To visit their Web-site..... Click Here

 

More staff were required and another tanker was added, and by 1993 a depot was sourced in Betchworth, Surrey.

1997 Terry Connolly....

My main competitors at this time sold out to a national tanker Company and Terry who had worked for this competitor for many years decided to join Clearmasters as a driver/partner in the business.    
Between us with the knowledge of the geographical area and our hands on approach, our aim towards existing and potential new customers was to ensure that our personal services could not be bettered by these national companies.

It worked and within two years we moved offices to our current site which was also very convenient for Thames Water as they owned the buildings.

2001 Cleaning up....

More and more work came from the industrial sources and in this year we decided to heavily invest in an all singing, all dancing high volume/deep lifting combination tanker, which instantly took me back to my earlier days with the 'sewer gang', but now I was clearing blockages and cleaning sewers with high pressure water jets instead of steel rods operated manually.  
This is still my favourite part of the job as each task is different and I just love a challenge.

With such a dirty job     'I MUST BE CLEAN AROUND THE BEND'

         
During this time I met my wife Julie who took over our clerical side of the Company which was currently neglected.  After many changes and additions to the system, along with recovering old debts, which I had written off by this time, the Company could now relax knowing its administration etc was under tight control.
Julie introduced all sorts of professional measures during this period, helping to bring Clearmasters up to all legal requirements.
2005 bought in a fresh driver (John) who was trained to operate along side Terry on the domestic side of the Company.

2006 Training period....

Pressure jetting and drain maintenance has taken the Company to a new level which has led to CCTV inspection equipment that we can now use for surveying and tracing pipework etc.
At this time we employed another operative (Wayne) who was trained to solely operate these complicated machines.  

On 1st October 2006 Clearmasters became a Limited Company and has gone from strength to strength.
 
During December 2006 the Company received its first brand new tanker. This is now operated by John and has become his 'best mate'.

Additionally we employed Angie to take over the account side of the business to relieve Julie of some of her duties, so she can devote more of her time to the ever growing transport needs. 

2007 Julie gains a Standard National Certificate of Professional Competence after intensive training and becomes the Companys Transport Manager. A real credit to her, this was not an easy task. Well done Jue X 

2009 has bought a new driver/ jetting operative to our Company who now works with Wayne as part of our two man team on the Jetting combination unit. Upgrades to training has resulted in staff gaining stringent confined space 'Level 2 high risk' certificates. Very essential for the type of work that we are involved in, i.e. entry into manholes and sewers etc. NVQ High pressure water jetting courses were undertaken with a 100% pass rate, the same with the National Water Hygiene courses and to highlight our honesty, all our staff are CRB checked (enhanced) and now carry cards to prove all of the above.

April 2009 we take delivery of a new combination High Volume Jet/Vac tanker.  

  click on photo: 

A very impressive machine that is more that capable of any cleaning task put before it. Full remote control, with unbelievable pumping and jetting power makes this major investment worth while. It seems such a far cry since (as mentioned above) I paid £1400 for that first tanker. Scary really!!!

16th April 2009 marks our 25th Anniversary. I still remember writing my first invoice on that day, No 0001 for No 8 Henfold Cotts, Newdigate, whose owners name's ironically were Mr & Mrs French. (no relation) Since that first day we have undertaken close to 60,000 jobs, and that is just to the domestic market, add over 13,000 commercial jobs, I'm sure we can boast that we are rather experienced in our trade, and can state that there aren't many sewage or pumping problems we haven't encountered, along with blocked sewer pipes, to major main sewers. This must relate to Billions of gallons transported.

2010....

This year saw a major investment with a very sophisticated Simon Moos KSA dewatering truck, a very impressive machine that requires a whole page of this web-site to explain....see: 'Dewatering' page.

We also obtained in a smaller jetting unit that is fully remote controlled, oh if only this machine had been available back in those early days, a really useful tool for domestic drain blockage clearance with a sole operator.

We added three more CCTV drainage camera systems to our fleet and employed a young Matt J to train and operate the CCTV side of the company. My plan was to use fresh young brains to absorb all the tec of this latest equipment and leave me to reflect on 'drain rods and simple things'.........my plan failed, as to date I'm now operating the Simon Moos KSA....they dont come much more sophisticated than this!!!!!

2011....

This year has seen more changes with staffing, training and the type of work we have become engaged with.

If someone had said to me back in 1984 that one day you will be engaged in shift work with your trucks cleaning the famous brick built 'London Sewers' around the London Bridge, Soho, Oxford Street, Shaftsbury Avenue areas, I would have backed up my statement of "Never" with a bet...I would have lost, because this year saw us arranging night shifts around our normal work to accomodate these sewer cleaning tasks for Thames Water and B P Mckeefry. A very challenging task which highlighted what all our training had been about.

See this link: London to Brighton sewers

It really brings it home to you when at 2 a.m. you are 60 meters up a sewer pipe, you shout for a spade to be bought down, it arrives the wrong way round and you can't turn it around because the pipe is to small, just then a fresh cargo drifts past your feet, floating on it's journey to the nearest STW, with a large sewer rat dashing past, looking most indignant that you should be in his normally unblocked throughfare..........time to get out I think, lets leave this work to the young ones is what goes through my mind as I overtake Roland on route to the exit, i climb the manhole access ladder quicker than a trapeze artist and within seconds delegate the shoveling task, 60 meters up the pipe, to Matt J. Matt smiles, says nothing and drops down the ladder.

A demanding job that requires a catalogue of H & S rules to be adhered to and a worker that has not the slightest fear of enclosed spaces.

Wayne achieves his HGV Licence (Well done Wayne) he now operates the high volume Jet/Vac combination tanker with a new member of staff Matt E. Another HGV driver joined us (Andy), and young Matt J takes advantage of the lower age laws for HGV driving and passes his exams and test making him one of the UKs youngest HGV drivers at 19 years old. (Well done Matt)

We take delivery of a new High pressure Jet/Vac tanker. This is now operated by Andy.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all past customers who kept faith in us, even through the bad times over the last 27 years... And we look forward to serving them and you for the next 27 years.....

WHICH WILL HOPEFULLY ALL GO TO WASTE......

COLIN

The motion is carried...