An electric bin lorry trapped vehicles on a narrow one-way residential street after breaking down in Reading.

The incident occurred on Saturday, January 6 at approximately 8:30am on Beecham Road, Reading.

Due to the truck’s inability to ‘free wheel’ and the lack of room to manoeuvre, this left residents unable to move their cars for the duration of time that the lorry was trapped.

The bin lorry, dubbed ‘Dusty Binfield’, was recovered later in the day by a diesel lorry.

A resident on Beecham Road contacted the Chronicle to report this incident. They said: “There were two problems when trying to retrieve the broken down vehicle. The lorry is electric and cannot freewheel and the rescue lorry sent to tow it away is a diesel lorry and is too wide to negotiate Beecham Road.”

Beecham Road is considered one of the longest one-way streets in Reading without any side roads leading from it. This increased the difficulty of recovery.

He added: “The irony is that an electric vehicle requires a diesel vehicle to rescue it - once it's managed to reach it.”

Reading Borough Council confirmed that the vehicle was recovered on the day that it broke down by the Council’s fleet maintenance contractor.

They said: “Electric vehicles require a different approach to recovery than diesel vehicles but our fleet maintenance provider is equipped to deliver this service and did so that same day.

"Having occurred on a Saturday (6 January, due to post-Bank Holiday collections) this led to a slightly longer delay than had it happened on the usual weekday routes."