Team Renault Trucks – Nigel Butler, Commercial Director, Pete Murray, Network Truck and LCV Director, and Tony Owen, Transport Solutions Manager – proudly presented Transaid with a cheque of £35,053.07 following their gruelling 300 mile Cycle South Africa 2017 Challenge in March.
Transaid’s Head of Fundraising, Florence Bearman, and Corporate Partnerships Officer, Jade Ashby, joined Renault Trucks employees for a special presentation event held at the company’s UK Headquarters in Warwick last week.
On receiving the cheque, Florence Bearman, who also took part in the Cycle South Africa 2017 Challenge, said: “I’d like to thank Team Renault Trucks for all their efforts in raising what is one of the largest single amounts by a team or individual for our ‘Ride’ events and has helped us towards this year’s record-breaking total of £227,000. The money raised will go a long way in supporting our road safety programmes, expanding driver training in Uganda and across sub-Saharan Africa.”
For Team Renault Trucks, this was an opportunity to thank the whole Renault Trucks family, including colleagues and the dealer network, for supporting them throughout their long journey to South Africa, with generous donations and good wishes.
Nigel Butler said: “The Cycle South Africa challenge was an incredible experience and, as Team Renault Trucks, we are extremely proud to have been part of it, joining 39 other riders from across the UK’s transport and logistics industry to help raise money for Transaid. My thanks must go to all our supporters and sponsors, to our colleagues here at Warwick, our dealer network and to our friends on social media, whose generous donations inspired us to keep going when the going got really tough, in soaring temperatures and strong winds, potholes and punctures!”
The successful fundraising campaign extended to Renault Trucks’ social media channels, with a team blog documenting the long months of training and the ride event itself.
Even with all the months of training, club cyclist Tony Owen admitted that cycling 300 miles in five days was a challenge: “I can say without any doubt that it was tougher and hillier that I expected, but what a sense of achievement when we crossed the finish line at Cape Agulhas!”
For Pete Murray, a relative newcomer to cycling, the legacy of Cycle South Africa 2017 lives on – he’s now a convert to the sport, having entered several more challenge events this year. He said: “While my colleagues might not have expected it to be tough, I did – and it was! But I’m very proud to have taken up Transaid’s Cycle South Africa challenge as part of Team Renault Trucks, it was a hard but very worthwhile journey.”
