Yell delivers Yellow Pages to its namesake Shetland island - 25 May 2004
A painstaking 700 mile delivery reached its destination this week when Yell, the publisher of Yellow Pages directories, completed the transportation of 350 copies to its namesake Shetland island.For Yell, the international directories business, transporting the Aberdeen Yellow Pages to the tiny island of the same name from a North Yorkshire print facility is its most complicated delivery challenge.
Lying at the heart of the Shetland Islands and with a rich Viking heritage, Yell is part of the directory business’s most remote delivery region.
The five-day odyssey to deliver to Yell island started after the Aberdeen Yellow Pages directory was printed at RR Donnelley’s at Flaxby, North Yorkshire. Directories destined for the Shetland Islands were initially transported 332 miles by lorry, arriving at Aberdeen Docks the following day. They were then loaded on to a ferry for a 335 mile crossing to Lerwick that arrived almost two days later.
At Lerwick special pallets carrying around 11,000 copies of the Aberdeen directory were unloaded and then put into batches for each of the separate Shetland islands. Directories for Yell then faced a further journey of 27 miles by road to board the Yell-bound ferry at Toft, and finally a three mile crossing, before door-to-door delivery commenced on the historic island. Delivery was undertaken by specialist contractors The Directory Distribution Company.
Richard Duggleby, Yell’s head of external relations, said: “Getting the directories out to Yell and the rest of Shetland is our most complex delivery operation.
“But we always look forward each year to returning to Yell to deliver the new Aberdeen edition. We have an affinity to the island because we share the same name, but it’s also one of the most enchanting, unspoilt and undiscovered locations that we deliver to within the UK.”
With a population of about 1,000 there are around just 350 businesses and homes on Yell that receive a Yellow Pages directory.
The directory this year features around 50 Yell business address and telephone number entries – these make up the core of the entries in Yellow Pages directories.
The entries reflect the island’s distinctive characteristics, its culture and lifestyle. They range from entries for the island museum, stonemasons and shellfish outlets to fish farms and potato merchants.
Richard Duggleby added: “The feedback we get suggests that Yell islanders value their Yellow Pages directory when searching for local businesses and services or for the more major purchases where they may need to look further afield.”
