Lorryspotting

18/11/2025

Featuring two great hauliers whose vehicles have been featured on Lorryspotting over the years!

04/04/2025

EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT

Dear Members,

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the long term future of Lorryspotting. This comes in the wake of all the trauma the site experienced last year following the server crash and resultant data loss. But also, taking into consideration that the site does need considerable investment to bring it up to modern day programming and design standards. With all this in mind, I have felt the time has come for me to find a new owner for the site who has the wherewithal to take the site forwards without compromising what it stands for and the legacy/reputation it has.

All of this rather coincided with when I was introduced to Dan Lee - our new Site Tech Expert - who some of you have had some interactions with. It’s through the many conversations I’ve had with him that he asked me what my long term plans are and whether I would consider selling the site. In talking through what a potential takeover by Dan and his team might look like, I decided he would be a great fit to take the site over. He has a phenomenal technical background in both the language the site is coded in as well as how to handle large sizes of data that a site like Lorryspotting has and is really keen to bring those skills to the table whilst keeping things as they are in terms of how the site works, functions etc. Essentially, nothing will change in what the update team does, or how the site behaves other than it being improved in terms of design and server performance to best optimise members usage of the site. Dan has been incredibly influential in placing the site onto a significantly improved hosting platform which has been in place since September 2024 and this has ironed out the vast majority of speed and performance issues that the site was enduring.

As a result of these extensive discussions, I recently concluded a deal with Dan and the transition into his ownership is now underway. I will stay on in a transitional capacity but I can totally assure you, I wouldn’t have done this deal without ensuring the quality, legacy and functionality of the site is preserved and only enhanced for the future.

Whilst at times it hasn't been the easiest of journeys, I am pleased to have had the privilege of stewarding the site, ensuring the preservation of the legacy of our Founder - John Martin. I would like to place on record my thanks to you all and especially to the Update Team for your support and loyalty to Lorryspotting during my tenure as owner.

All membership enquiries and questions concerning the site should now be directed to Dan and his e-mail address is [email protected]. He will shortly be taking over the Lorryspotting.com e-mail inboxes to ensure continuity through the site's e-mail addresses. All updates for the site should continue to be sent to the Update Team as always.

I wish Dan and his team, alongside the members and the Update Team all the very best for the future from which I will be observing from the sidelines!

Kind regards,
Ben Lord

01/10/2024

09/09/2024

Server Migration - Planned Outage

Following the restoration of the site almost three months ago, we have been aware that the speed and performance of the server has been far from desirable.

Over the past few weeks, we have been liaising with a new company where they have a specialist proficient in both the language the site is coded in but in ensuring the right hosting infrastructure is setup to enable websites to perform to the best of their ability. We are very pleased that after some exhaustive testing, we are now in a position to move the site onto a new server platform that is provided by Amazon Web Services and what hosts a number of globally-renowned websites with high traffic demands.

Therefore, please be advised that Lorryspotting.com will be taken offline for this migration to happen and will be unavailable from Midnight (00:01 BST) Tuesday 10 September 2024 and should be live by 6am on Tuesday morning. Please do NOT attempt to login to the site during this time.

This migration also seeks to reinstate some of the site features that have remained unavailable since the site was restored.

Our testing phases have shown the site performing at the best it ever has and we hope that you'll find this once this has been completed.

Thank you to you all for your continued patience, understanding and support.

Kind regards,

Ben Lord
Managing Director - Lorryspotting.com

20/06/2024

SITE UPDATE - 20 JUNE 2024

After a very long and painful 4 months, we are pleased to advise you that we were able to restore the site earlier this afternoon.

We realise that we've not provided as many updates as you might have liked which has been down to a variety of factors but mainly that we simply needed to focus every effort to getting the site relaunched as soon as possible.

As previously advised, when the servers crashed back on 24 February 2024, it resulted in a catastrophic failure of both the live site as well as backup data we had to hand. We've spent a number of painstaking weeks resolving this. However, it is with enormous regret that we have to disclose that we irrevocably lost data from March 2023 onwards. Although this was a devastating blow to everyone concerned, we are fortunate it was only 11 months and not anything longer.

As part of our restoration efforts, we have now moved the site onto a new cloud-based server which should alleviate the issues that were previously experienced with slow server performance. Additionally, we committed to making this right to everyone affected and therefore everyone who had an active, valid membership as at 24 February 2024 will be having 4 months added onto their existing membership to compensate for the downtime you've not had the use of the site. This is not an automatic process though and therefore if, upon logging into the site, you find yourself with a renewal message - please email us on [email protected] so that we can swiftly resolve this for you.

Now that we have overcome this hiatus of the last four months, we are especially grateful to the Update Team who have graciously understood the less than ideal position we found ourselves in and collectively thrown as much resources as they could to restore the site to its former glory. I am enormously indebted to each of them.

Having provided assurances on the improvements we've made to ensure this never happens again, as well as delivering on other opportunistic improvements such as with the server, we will shortly be issuing a members survey so that we can involve you in the future plans for the site as well as receiving your feedback on any other parts of the service too.

Thank you to you all for your continued patience, understanding and support and a warm welcome back to Lorryspotting.com for you all

Kind regards,

Ben Lord
Managing Director - Lorryspotting.com

03/05/2024

We are aware some members are able to view the site despite it still being in maintenance mode.

Work is continuing to restore the site and we would ask that no one tries to log into the site whilst this restoration effort continues.

We have repeatedly stated we will issue an update when the site is ready to be used again and this hasn’t changed.

Thank you for your continued patience and co-operation.

30/03/2024

Members Site Update - 30 March 2024

Dear Members,

It is now more than a month since the site experienced a significant server outage resulting in the site continuing to remain offline. Throughout this time, we've had our server team at our web developers together with our hosts, data backup providers and internal update team working to determine the issues and what needs to be done to restore the site. It is regretful just how long this is taking and we are disappointed how long this is taking.

At the end of last week, the disks hosting the data on the server which crashed have been sent off to forensic disk recovery. There is in excess of 200GB of data on these disks to work on and therefore it cannot be underestimated as to the enormity of this task.

We completely realise that this doesn't provide much by way of timescales to when we can get back to enjoying the site in all its glory but wished to at least provide an update to you to reassure you that everything that can be done is being done by all concerned. At this stage, we still do not know an exact timescale of when the site will be back online although we are continuing to strive to achieve this at the earliest opportunity.

Alongside these restoration efforts, it is enabling the team to work on accelerating the new website which we made a long-term investment commitment to deliver in 2022. There is a possibility we may be in a position to resume the Lorryspotting site onto the website platform that we have been preparing in recent months. Whilst there isn't a firm guarantee that this can be aligned, it is something that continues to be looked at.

Thank you for your continued support and patience. Given the length of outage, we do intend extending all the active memberships by whatever the period the site is offline for. In the meantime, we hope we can continue to rely on your support to enable our sole focus to be getting things back online as soon as is practicably possible.

Kind regards,

Ben Lord
Managing Director - Lorryspotting.com

08/03/2024

Site Offline Update - 8 March 2024

It is almost two weeks since the site experienced a significant server outage resulting in the site remaining offline. Throughout this time, we've had our server team at our web developers together with our hosts, data backup providers and internal update team working to determine the issues and what needs to be done to restore the site.

Some of the service providers to the site, like many other websites, are in various corners of the world and this has proven a challenge in terms of navigating time-zones to achieve progress. Last weekend behind the scenes, we managed to restore the structure of the site but we continue to have issues in restoring all of the data that we had up to the point the site was offline. We know it is somewhere between our cloud backup provider and the database on the server prior to the outage but the retrieval it is proving a greater challenge than we had anticipated.

Efforts continue behind the scenes to locate all of the data right up to when the site experienced the server outage and we hope to have more news on this early next week.

We completely realise that this doesn't provide much by way of timescales to when we can get back to enjoying the site in all its glory but wished to at least provide an update to you to reassure you that everything that can be done is being done by all concerned.

At this stage, we still do not know an exact timescale of when the site will be back online although we are striving to achieve this at the earliest opportunity.

Thank you for your continued support and patience. We will make this right with everyone just as soon as things get back to normal and for now, hope we can rely on your support to enable our sole focus to be getting things back online as soon as is practicably possible.

Kind regards,
Ben Lord - Managing Director

25/02/2024

We are aware that our website is currently offline due to server issues. This is being worked on by our server team and we hope to be back online ASAP.

Thank you for your patience and continued support.

13/12/2023

We are aware on an issue with the renewal of the SSL certificate which the site runs on. It was due to auto renew but our hosting company has had an issue with this.

We are informed normal service should resume this evening.

19/11/2023

Save the date!
Our next auction is a big one - with over 500 lots!
Saturday 25th November at 9am
Bid online or attend in person on the day (please let us
know if you will be attending).
View the catalogue here:
https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/speedbirdpromotions/catalogue-id-speedb10031