SI Barnstaple’s Vehicle Stickers

Living in a county of narrow roads means constantly looking at the rear ends of vehicles, mostly lorries, for some distance before the opportunity to overtake occurs.

As a haulier, I knew that notices of relevance were located on the rear of trailers and so my Soroptimist club decided to explore the viability of using the space for human trafficking awareness stickers.

We firstly needed to look at the space available on the rear doors of trailers and 22 x 7.5 ins was the maximum size the stickers could be to not affect any legal requirements or door access.

We had to consider the font size of a message that could be easily read from a following vehicle and, guided by the Purple Teardrop Campaign regarding content of the signs and the print colour, we approached a local vehicle sign-writer to produce the first batch which they kindly sponsored in exchange for having their logo on them.

With all our own trailers displaying the stickers, we then ensured all local hauliers were introduced to them and with lorries being one of the main illegal entry methods being used, the importance of awareness of human trafficking and the Crimestoppers number to call if suspicious was pointed out to them.

We have received several requests for information regarding the project and know that Soroptimist clubs and regions have had varying degrees of success with their local hauliers who – I know from personal experience – are precious regarding what is displayed on their vehicles.

However, we feel that this simple awareness-raising method is worth pursuing and we have since had car stickers printed.

We, as a club, are proud of the fact that vehicles are travelling throughout the UK with these stickers on and included on them are the words ‘Developed by SI Barnstaple.’

Oh – husband has just told me we have five more trailers on order – and we just happen to have the stickers to hand to slap on them immediately they arrive.

For more information contact SI Barnstaple.