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When you’re making a long journey, it can be easy enough to start daydreaming about the future and what it might be like for drivers in a few decades time – how will vehicles look, and how will they run? But have you ever considered that we might be driving lorries powered by honey? No? Well maybe you should start thinking again! A group of young students have come up with a vision for lorries of the future which won’t need to rely on petrol or electricity to get round the roads, but on the fruits of Mother Nature. This plan would use honey to help us get goods from A to B in a way that is rather more green. Who would have thought that delivery work could be made so sweet? Where Did This Idea Come From? South Ribble Borough Council with Leyland Trucks and Educational Consultancy STEMFirst set up a competition as part of a bid both to promote links between schools and businesses and to get more people involved in science, technology, engineering or maths subjects (STEM). The competition was run for pupils across Lancashire and built around a Dragons Den-style format. Schoolchildren were asked to make a futuristic design of either a long-distance vehicle carrying large heavy loads, or a smaller delivery truck transporting goods to several locations. As part of their designs, the teams had to take into account maintenance of vehicles, their noise levels, and their type of fuel and emissions, among other factors such as cost, appearance, safety, and suitability for long distance delivery work. The STEM Ambassador judges then marked each competing group according to their use of teamwork in coming up with the design, their researching skills and creativity, and the overall impact of their project. Who Were the Winning Team? The winners were the all-girl “Queen Bees” team from Broad Oak Primary school in Preston who invented the concept of a honey-fuelled vehicle. Their teachers, Louise Bush and Sally Coulson, said the competition has opened the eyes of the pupils to the work involved in engineering, particularly by seeing the technology “in the flesh” at the Leyland truck site. As a result of their win, a model of their design has been created and, along with 13 others, has now joined the Truck Trail of model vehicles set up around Leyland by Stone Create, to celebrate the town’s proud engineering pedigree. Will We Be Seeing This Model on the Roads? It might be a little while yet before we see honey-powered trucks rolling down the motorways, but this competition is a great way for pupils to think about what transportation and delivery work might look like in the future. Keep up the hive of activity though, guys, and perhaps, who knows – we could all be motoring on the sweet stuff soon! Norman Dulwich is a Correspondent for Haulage Exchange, the leading online trade network for the road transport industry. Connecting logistics professionals across the UK and Europe through their website, Haulage Exchange provides services for matching delivery work with available drivers. Over 4,500 transport exchange businesses are networked together through their website, trading jobs and capacity in a safe 'wholesale' environment.
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