Curse of Coca-Cola Christmas truck from inferno to 4-hour queues – & furious towns whose holidays it ‘ruins’ every year
CHRISTMAS-MAD Brits line the streets every year to catch a glimpse of the iconic Coca-Cola truck.
It's been 13 years since the large red vehicles made their maiden voyage around the UK and so far only a few of the stops for this year have been revealed.
The trucks, which weighs 14 tonnes and feature nearly 9,000 lights, were originally called “Christmas caravans” when they were unveiled in a 1995 Coca-Cola TV advert.
While many Brits make the annual pilgrimage to see the iconic vehicle at supermarkets and cities around the country, some are less than impressed.
It follows a number of unfortunate events to plague the Coca-Cola Christmas Truck Tour over the years, which some have likened to a 'curse'.
From a horror fire to multi-hour traffic jams, we look back at some of the surprising incidents.
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Xmas inferno
Instead of spreading Christmas cheer to onlookers, residents near Bucharest, Romania, were filled with panic after spotting the Coca-Cola Christmas truck engulfed in flames.
Viral video footage showed fire ripping through the vehicle’s trailer and black smoke filling the air while it drove through the streets, in Berceni, on November 29, last year.
The driver was forced to make an emergency stop in the middle of the road and tried to put out the blaze unsuccessfully before firefighters arrived.
Horrified onlookers were filmed watching the inferno before it was put out and online one user wrote: "The holidays are cancelled."
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At the time, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola Romania said: "It was an incident with no casualties and no major damage.”
The drinks company told local media they would take steps to prevent similar incidents from taking place again.
Despite the seriousness of the incident, those online were quick to joke that Coca-Cola had “a new flavour now - smokey”. Another quipped: “There’s nothing worse than warm Coca-Cola”.
Lost truck
In 2017, Coca-Cola fans in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, were left waiting for cold for several hours when the festive truck got lost and stuck in a field.
A spokesperson at the time said: “Unfortunately our driver took a wrong turn earlier today and had to turn on a very narrow road.
"We apologise to the fans who have been waiting since earlier today.”
Later, a photo emerged on Facebook that showed the lorry stuck on a country lane 20 miles out of the town in Market Rasen.
Becky French, who posted the pic, wrote: "The truck is stuck! Issues with the lorry basically means it's stuck in a field."
One commenter posted: “Typical of Gainsborough’s luck.”
The delays meant the Coca-Cola truck arrived at 1pm instead of 11am.
'Trapped' motorists
The Coca-Cola truck’s visit to Silverburn Shopping Centre, in Glasgow, caused outrage in November 2017 after the attraction caused a major gridlock.
Unhappy motorists claimed they felt like “prisoners” after being “trapped” in the venue’s car park for more than two hours because of high levels of traffic.
One blasted the shopping centre for “horrific management” and a second said the traffic jam was “a disgrace” and “absolutely ridiculous”.
A third wrote: “Thanks for ruining my Saturday silverburn. Appalling incompetence. It's online shopping from now on. Hope everyone votes with their feet.”
A tweet from Silverburn Shopping Centre admitted there were “large volumes of traffic due to the high number of visitors” to the Coca-Cola event.
They added: “We have over 40 staff members on the ground assisting in traffic direction and are doing our utmost to alleviate the situation.”
'4-hour queues'
Coca-Cola was forced to apologise back in 2015 after an event at an Asda in Coryton, Wales, caused lengthy queues and gridlock traffic.
Drivers told Wales Online that routes that typically took 15 minutes lasted as long as three or four hours due to the excessive amount of cars on the road.
Asda, who later apologised for “the inconvenience” that was caused, admitted the event had been “extremely popular” that year.
The worst hit areas were the A470 and A4054 Coryton Interchange, with delays worsened due to two collisions that happened that same day.
Alison Morris, from Whitechurch, branded the traffic “absolutely ridiculous” after it took her one-hour to make a three-mile journey.
The mum, who used back roads to speed up the trip, said: "The police need to do something about this. It is absolutely crazy.”
Rachel Davidson said it took her fiance more than three hours to make a journey from Barry to Rhiwbina - a route that normally takes 30 minutes.
Wayne Brigham revealed he had been stuck in the Asda car park for two-and-a-half hours and believed if his partner “hadn’t complained” they would have been there for longer.
Petition
Inevitably, when the locations for the Coca-Cola Christmas Truck Tour are announced, some people will be disappointed that their town or city isn't on the list.
Last year, locals in Lancashire and Cumbria fumed over being skipped six years in a row and others in Scotland vented about the limited number of stops.
But in 2017, student David Marks took it one step further by launching a petition to get the truck to stop in Plymouth.
Online, he wrote: “Why has Plymouth been forgotten? I’m disgusted. We are [a] city and should not be forgotten.”
David said he would contact his local MP and his petition received fewer than 100 signatures.
Public health fury
It’s not just public backlash that has been caused by the Coca-Cola Christmas Truck Tour.
In 2017, Public Health England urged local councils and shopping centres to ban the visits because they promoted “unhealthy, sugary” drinks.
They told The Guardian that the majority of the pitstops on Coca-Cola’s tour had above-average levels of children with tooth decay or obesity.
They included Bolton where 40.5 per cent of five year olds were reported to have tooth decay at the time - the highest number of all areas visited by the truck.
The Royal Society for Public Health also agued the tour was unwise while the nation was “in the grips of an obesity epidemic”.
Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the body, said: “Sugary drinks are a big part of the problem - they account for 30 per cent of four-to-10-year-olds' daily sugar intake.”
A Coca-Cola spokesperson defended the tour stating it was “a one-off, annual event” and that they did offer sugar-free versions of the drinks to those attending events.
They added: “We also have a policy of not providing drinks to children under the age of 12, unless their parent or guardian is present and says they can have one.
“The truck tour route changes every year as we try to cover a fair geographical spread of the UK.”
In 2019, Coca-Cola came under fire again when Mark Hall, from Business Waste, blasted the company for making "unnecessary journeys" that polluted the environment.
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He said: “Driving a truck the length and breadth of the country for no clear purpose sets a bad example.
"The fact is, they're driving lorries over 3,000 miles up and down the country, then up and down the country, then up and down the country one final time on completely unnecessary journeys, with zero route planning. That's the same as driving from London to Moscow – and back again!"