Mission & Ethos
www.transportcafe.co.uk was founded and established in 1996 by a one time HGV driver who started driving in the 1950's whilst an electrician on a Mobile Field Photographic Section in the Royal Air Force. The requirement for all unit personal to drive led him from troop and equipment carrying trucks, including bowsers, onto articulated photographic laboratories which required manoeuvring in forests, (reversing through trees) to remote intelligence bunkers, great fun!
Later apart from Taxies, private hire, personal chauffeur, and occasional private coach, driving flat rigids in Albion form and Leyland Comets flat nose and bull articulated all over Britain. This was all ropes and sheets and variable loads from barrels and bags of dried peas like ball bearings, to cornflakes in sacks in flake maze form. This later was condensed into a 4-year period and it was exiting!
The mission of this website is to help drivers and promote Transport Cafés Truck Stops & Lorry Parks, profit has not been the motive, rather love!
As the site has grown, the cost of overheads has grown, in this respect in order to enable its unrestricted operation donations have been gratefully received by the hosting company, this could alone cost in excess of £2000 per year. My thanks to those Transport Cafes and companies who’s donations to Uk Domain Hosts have greatly assisted.
In 2005 the ownership of the site was passed to my son, to continue in the same spirit of caring for those Knights of the Road, but to place it on a sound financial footing. To this end Google Adds are now are visible on these pages where 70,000 actual visitors arrive each month.
My son, who is also named John, is far more able in this theatre of operations than I am, having a Masters degree in I.T so the site is in very capable hands for which I am thankful. The ethos or philosophy of the site will stay the same, to help those professional drivers (knights of the road) on the road, from Commercial traveller, white van man, Coach or Bus drivers, finally the HGV driver and those members of the public and other professions who like me have an affinity with the unpretentious nature of these establishments which offer good food and value to drivers over long hours.
Ethical Standards
We will not take ads that are dishonest. We will not take ads that encourage a driver to stay awake and drive when he or she should be resting. We will not take ads that are not 100% child safe. In these previous regards we monitor google adds and block any that don’t meet our criteria. Our aim is to promote facilities for drivers,,, but drivers have families,, and neither they or this site,, want none child safe material,, or goods that are full of caffeine encouraging drivers to drive whilst tired,,, we wouldn’t do just anything, and we definitely wouldn’t do that! Old Standards Still Prevail!
CONSTRUCTION OF THIS SITE OR MAP OF PAGES
The main page which can be known as the home page or index page has links to the three main list pages which are, Transport Cafes, Lorry Parks, Truck Stops on A & B roads, then another for Motorways or near motorways sufficiently to be of interest to a driver, in this respect they will be cross referenced especially where an A road crosses a motorway near to a facility. WE DO NOT LIST MOTORWAY SERVICES, the exception proves the rule. The small photographs which appear on the front page and link to a page of photographs are actually easily accessed from the photograph list page also, which becomes an archive. All the photographs you have seen over the years will be there, they are never removed.
So we have
One page for Transport Cafes Truck Stops Lorry parks on A or B roads in the UK
One page for Transport Cafes Truck Stops Lorry parks near or on motorway intersections in the UK
One page for Photographs in the UK. Consisting of Trucks, Roads, Countryside in Wales, Scotland & England, Scenery, unique buildings old and new, vehicles of various types past and present.
There are other pages on single subject matters, which can be accessed from the front page on home page of this site. One example is help and information on CB Radio, Antennas, Propagation, and transmission lines.
The website is written in fully validated html css, every page is 100% checked/validated before posting. Some browsers cannot yet understand all html css. Internet Explorer is used by 98% of visitors to this site, and is technically in advance of other browsers, even if the other browsers look pretty, all that glitters is not gold!
Truck Stops Transport Cafes Home Page.This is the main entry page for this website, it has all the links to other pages, click here to choose your next page. There is the on, or, near Motorways Truck Stops Transport Cafes list,,,, then there is the A and B roads list with Transport Cafes and truck Stops, also a photo Gallery List and individual pages all accessed from the home page