How on earth did he get his rig stuck here? Image kindly supplied by reader Marie.

Something a bit odd took place behind Silver Court yesterday, Friday 6th January, at just before 5pm – reader and old pal of the blog Marie who lives nearby filled my in with the details as the story unfolded, and the whole thing left me a bit bewildered.

For those of you who don’t know, behind Silver Court, which lies just off Brownhills High Street, there is a service road providing access to the houses that form the upper floors of the Court. The service road is currently being reworked as part of the housing development between it and the canal. This isn’t really a through road, just an access drive, that leaves Silver Street just past Farmfoods on the left.

Somehow, yesterday evening, an articulated lorry bearing the Tesco name in huge lettering found itself in that service road, then got very, very stuck when the hapless driver tried to extricate it.

Man, you got that stuck in there real good… Image kindly supplied by reader Marie.

This, you might think, is an easy mistake to make if you don’t know the area, and indeed, many drivers of such HGVs are agency workers, and often don’t know their routes well.

Where Mr. Tesco (or perhaps Mr. Well Driven, who knows?) got his rig stuck. Imagery from Google Maps.

I’m sharing this with you because several odd things happened. One of them was that I tried to contact Tesco about this via Twitter. Their customer service reps on social media couldn’t have been less interested, disowning the vehicle, and pointing out that it was operated by a company called… ‘Well Driven’. I kid you not:

Well Danny, that wasn’t helpful at all. you sure this wasn’t a wind up? If not, I’d be seriously talking to trading standards about the name ‘Well Driven’ as it’s clearly a misnomer….

So despite having a stuck wagon causing local difficulties for residents, bearing the Tesco brand, it was not their problem. Repeated attempts to get Tesco customer service to respond in any helpful manner failed.

I wonder if – heaven forbid – the wagon had been opened and contents vanished, if they’d have been so laissez faire? I somehow doubt it very much.

Either way, the fact that Tesco didn’t seem to be much bothered for their operation’s impact on local communities doesn’t come as a surprise.

I called “Well Driven’ – they denied any responsibility and weren’t interested either. I don’t know what the opposite of a convoy actually is, but it seems we’d got one.

Meanwhile, Marie was watching as the driver managed to extract the trailer, but seemed to get his tractor unit into worse difficulties:

That’s not much of an improvement, and looks quite costly. Oh dear. Image kindly supplied by reader Marie.

I tried further with Tesco online but got nowhere. Later in the evening, someone turned up to help the driver get his truck out with planks of wood and wedges under the wheels. It seems, after some difficulty and several hours, the wagon was freed, and disappeared into the night.

This was the scene this morning, with quite a bit of damage:

Now, I’m not sure what you can draw from all this but if you’re involved in some strife with a lorry marked Tesco, it’s nothing to do with them, clearly – and should you try and find out who the operators are, you look set to be in for quite a hard time.

Paul Simon wrote the wonderful ‘Mean Individual Stranded in a Limousine’ (which was wonderfully covered by Michelle Shocked) – we had a lorry driver stranded in a HGV…

Moreover, how on earth did the driver come to be stuck there, and what chance is there of the company responsible for him putting any of the damage right, or perhaps sorting out decent route training?

Answers on a postcard to…

I’d love to hear from Tesco about this, but I shan’t hold my breath. BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com.

Cheers to Marie for all the photos and running commentary.