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ace invaders
Page 17
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luestion: How do I replace six rigids on 4h-street deliveries with three rehicles able to carry bigger payloads lown narrow, crowded streets? inswer: Ask the man from the Co-op.
I Down at areham on the South Coast ti-op distribution manager Ian Dodd as just made a radical change in his disibuton operation, replacing six 17.5rne rigids with three 24-tonne urban rtes. "I got the idea when I saw a reartear trailer at the IRTE Telford show," he xplains. "But I was not too keen on that articular set-up as I thought that the able operating the turntable might tretch in service."
But with the fleet corning up for aplacerrent he wanted to prepare for le Working Time Directive, and three rban artics would use the same number I drivers working a four-day shift patrn over a six-day week.
lore deliveries
24-tonner has a payload of 12 tonnes; bout 20% more than a 17.5-tonner. That quates to 36x330kg cages—enough took for three store deliveries instead f two. This cuts fleet mileage by about 5%, and with a fourth trailer utilisation Gold be improved, allowing four delivery ycles a day instead of three.
We talked with Klege lump who had one some work for Co-op Dairy," says iodd. They offered us a trailer with a Ingle rigid bar connection between the fth wheel and the rear steered trailer xle. Our main concern was ease of ccess as many of the deliveries are to tores in small villages.
"As a trial we hired a full-height trailer Tim TIP for three weeks. They brought ne in from Holland for us. I had to prove ) myself that it would do the job. It rorked OK at all but three of our 80 stores and at those the problem was one of overall length—there just was not mom to park the 13m combination on a 10m driveway—but getting in and out was not a problem."
On the strength of this trial Dodd ordered four Klege Europ trailers and, after considering Volvo and Mercedes, bought three MAN urban tractors. The total investment was 2380,000, This will be written off over the next four years but he plans to run the trucks for up to seven years.
"We put them on the road in the quiet period between Christmas and New Year," he says. 'All of our drivers had Class I licences but it had been some time since some of them had driven an artic. They each had half a day to familiarise themselves and we haven't had a single complaint from them."
The MAN units, badged LE 220B, are specified with MAN's 6.87-litre six-cylinder engine rated at 220hp with 826Nm of torque. The six-speed synchromesh transmission is well suited to an urban environment, and cruise control is handy for the short motorway run only about seven miles) to Portsmouth.
Rear window
"We had a rear window added to the Steyr-type day cab to add to all-round visibility," says Dodd. 'The whole unit runs on 19.5io wheels to give a low cab entry height of just over a metre. That is quite a bit lower than for our previous rigids.
"But the trailer is key to the operation. The fully insulated 10.5m-long Klege Europ body, fitted with an air-operated security shutter at the rear has a K value of 0.3W/m2K. It can take a Carrier Genesis R90 freezer unit, but for the time being we are operating it as an insulated ambient unit. A :ongitudinal bulkhead divides the floor space, giving a 1;2 ratio.
"Extra tanks en the trailer give additional air capacity to enable the shutter to be closed every time each batch of three cages are wheeled into the store. It's a simple press-button operation with no strain on the driver. Neither is there any drain on the batteries but, to assist unloading, a 1,500kg-capacity Del electric column lift is mounted at the rear.
"The box is mounted on a Row chassis with Jost landing legs, Wabco air suspension and Tridec turntables. So we have a German tractor pulling a French body mounted on a Belgium chassis with a Dutch steering axle...1don't know what Our purchasing department made of that! With air suspension on both the rear of the tractive unit and the trailer the load platform can be made level for unloading on all the gradients we encounter.
'We cover less than 50,000 miles a year within a radius of about 25 miles—the trucks spend half their life standing still. We expect to get 12mpg, which is a big improvement over our old MAN 17.5tonners that returned 8.5mpg. Road tax is 290.75 for six months or 2160 a year, which is a fraction of what we were paying."
The theoretical advantages are clear, but how would they perform on the daily delivery run? Driver Trevor Rimmer admits: "We thought the management had gone mad when they told us they were buying artics to do the job. As it was we often had to shunt our 17.5-tonne rigids back and forth to negotiate the bends in narrow streets in the country towns that are regularly made more congested by parked cars.
Practice
"It took a little practice to get used to reversing with the rear-steer axle but now I find it easy" Rimmer adds. "Going forward the trader wheels follow in the tractor's wheel tracks with hardly any cut-in at all.
it's much easier to manoeuvre as it takes Up less road width than a rigid. A big benefit with this artic is that we are able to stay on our own side of the road for most of the time, even when we come to tight situations.
"Sometimes it appears to worry other road users—from the expression on some of their faces they mat think that they are about to get wiped out as we just glide through. At roundabouts, for example, we are able to cruise up to the white line, well within the nearside lane, then turn sharp !eft. Try to do that with a Conventional artier
Im by Bill Brock