Fleet is fuelled with recycled cooking oil

Tom Druitt: ‘We have a few irons in the fire.’

The Big Lemon powers the rest of its fleet with biodiesel – which in this case means recovered cooking oil.

This is collected from restaurants, filtered and delivered by Southwarkbased Uptown Oils. The Big Lemon fleet now includes eight full-sized biodiesel-powered coaches, which are used on a variety of excursion and private hire work.

‘Biodiesel is ideal from a handling point of view,’ Druitt says. ‘We can keep a supply on site at our depot, which we wouldn’t be allowed to do with diesel.’

He says the company has reciprocal arrangements with several businesses in other parts of the country that can refuel his company’s vehicles when necessary. ‘And if the worst comes to the worst, they can always run on normal diesel.’