Engineerss notebook
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MOST STORIES begin with chapter one, but the Volvo White story begins with Chapter 11. Back in September 1980 the original White Motor Corporation filed for Chapter 11 status (that is, bankruptcy) which allowed it to operate under US court protection while working out a plan to repay its debts.
One year later Volvo announced that it had purchased, for $70m, White's commercial vehicle manufacturing and distribution assets and the Volvo White Truck Corporation of Greensboro North Carolina was born.
Sten Langenius, Volvo's forthright president, was clearly pleased with the deal he had struck and with the opportunity it gave his company for further expansion.
"Volvo has, during the past decade doubled its production volume, and is now one of Europe's leading manufacturers of medium and heavy duty trucks" he said.
"We regard the continuous growth of production volume as a necessity to continue with planned investment in product development and in production. The United States is the world's largest single truck market and normal sales volumes there correspond approximately to the combined sales in Western Europe. Our presence in the US provides us with the opportunity of achieving the required growth.
"Volvo trucks have been available in the US market since 1975, and our present sales total about 1,500 trucks per year. We have experienced difficulties in achieving sufficient profitability, and we are aware that we need to establish local manufacture in the US in order to, among other things, cut freight costs.
"We have also learned that a successful development in the US market requires a wider product range, and especially heavy trucks that meet the specific US customer demands. Through the acquisition of White's assets we gain access to a range of modern, highly competitive heavy duty trucks, and also to new and effective production facilities which provide the capacity to produce Volvo trucks."
In a nutshell, that was the thinking that lay behind Volvo's keeness to become a US-based manufacturer, despite that country's massively depressed home market for heavy trucks (which finally began to recover somewhat late last year).
We have seen how an American manufacturer goes about introducing its methods into Europe with the Paccar takeover of Foden (CM July 31, 1982). But what happens when the engineers and managers fly across the Atlantic in the opposite direction? A while ago I visited Chicago and Ogden, Utah, with a view to finding out what the Volvo effect has been after two years.
Draw a circle on a map of Illinois with a 40-mile radius from Chicago and you can reckon that you will have circumscribed the area which has more trucks registered annually than any other similar size region in the world.
Many multinational companies (including International Harvester and Standard Oil), often with very large fleets, have their world headquarters in the Windy City.
And at the other end of the scale, there are countless brokers (the American term for owner-drivers) who operate from in or around Chicago. So for any American commercial vehicle manufacturer, Chicago is certainly an important city.
Volvo White has a wholly owned distributor in the area with two sites, one on the northside and one on the southside of the city, both the responsibility of general manager Frank Kozlowski. Like many Volvo White employees Frank is an exInternational Harvester man. His enthusiasm for the new cornpany's products and management style is strongly evident and clearly has filtered through to his staff. All those to whom I spoke found praise aplenty not only for the vehicles, (as you might expect) but also for the support they were receiving from the Greensboro head office arid for the Swedish management style.
But the key question for Volvo surely is what do the US operators think of them? I visited and spoke to several in the Chicago area who had begun to operate Volvos. The US registration figures tell you that Volvo White is still a small fish in a very big pond. The four marques of the corporation — White, Volvo, Western Star and Autocar come just above "miscellaneous" in the total US registrations table, with Ford and International don1inating the heavy duty registrations way above them, and GM, Mack, Kenworth, Freightliner and Peterbilt all beating White.
If anything, the typical Chicago haulier is even more conservative than his British counterpart and is not about to heap praise on any vehicle which has not fully proved itself to his satisfaction.
But there is no doubt that many US operators have been impressed by the F7 and F6's fuel economy, and their drivers are mightily impressed by the cabs. They are not used to such refinement in a vehicle of this size. F7 tractive units are used for local distribution in the USA, generally at a gcw of 65,000 lb (29.5 tonnes).
So the new fish has not caused a splash yet but clearly it has created some ripples.
The F6 sixteen-tonner already has some tough European competition in the USA in the form of Mercedes-Benz LP models. The Seng Leasing and Contract hire company in Chicago illustrates the way US operators are beginning to prefer European vehicles in the middle weight categories.
Seng has 70 vehicles in classes six and seven on long term contract mostly for 5 years. Forty seven of them are Mercedes-Benz and five Volvo F613s have recently joined the fleet. Ken Seng told me that the main reasons for moving away from the Ford and Harvester vehicles he had prevously favoured were their maintenance costs and poor fuel consumption (the charge-out rate for labour on trucks in Chicago is currently around $38 [£27] an hour and mechanics earn between nine and 15 dollars per hour).
He described the fuel consumption of the IH DT466 engine in particular as "lousy."
Perhaps the best compliment that Ken Seng could pay his Volvos was a rather backhanded one: "We avoid putting them in lease support," he said (the replacement scheme for vehicles which break down) "because it's a tough job to get the drivers back to their original vehicles afterwards."
By the time I had spoken to perhaps half a dozen more Chicago hauliers, I began to get a feeling akin to deja vu. There is a parallel to be drawn between Volvo's position now in the USA and the one it was in the UK
some seventeen years ago. Then, the Swedish manufacturer's vehicles were considered slightly "oddball" and not really serious rivals by the rather complacent domestic UK manufacturer, until its market share began to climb steeply mainly as a result of the imported vehicle's greater driver appeal, good fuel economy, and enthusiastic, professional dealer-support.
Volvo has a similar recipe for growth in the US but there are two important differences. After the problems they have had of late the US domestic manufacturers are unlikely to be at all complacent.
The second difference is that with the White and Autocar vehicles, Volvo White has USdesigned products, ready made, as it were for the special demands of that market.
Anyone who expected the Swedish engineers to tear up the blue prints of those vehicles within months of the takeover and immediately introduce European thinking would have been very wrong. The Swedes gave themselves time to understand the detailed requirements of American hauliers. Now they are beginning to make some changes where they think appropriate, but all very discreetly. They know that any hint of a "Europeans know best" attitude would do nothing for their sales figures.
However, it is clear that in the areas of aerodynamics and ride standard in particular the US vehicles can benefit from European engineering. The 1984 Whites and Autocars are showing signs of improvements which bring them slightly closer to their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic, and the diagonal trim on the radiator is a subtle indication of the Volvo influence.
The "conventional" (normal control) White tractive units have had their bonnets lowered by 152mm (6in) at the front and narrowed by the same amount to improve aerodynamic efficiency, and roof-mounted air deflector kits are now available for all White models for those operators who are really keen to reduce Cd.
Other modifications on the 1984 White range include a redesigned air intake system, improved cooling, improved corrosion protection, stronger chassis frame and a number of detailed features aimed at improving serviceability. Electric drives for the tachometer and speedometer (tachographs are not used in the States), for example, have replaced the earlier troublesome cables.
Many US manufacturers have now begun to move away from the traditional complete customisation concept, that is allowing the customer to specify whichever components he wants, down to the last nut and bolt. Volvo White's strategy is to find out which components most of its customers specify, fit these as standard and then offer "delete options". It is a logical compromise with which few hauliers would argue.
But 1,500 miles or so to the west of Chicago a Volvo White plant is being run by an Englishman who has had to come to terms with his customers becorning deeply involved in their new vehicles' specifications.
At Ogden, Utah, about 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, Volvo White builds Autocar conventional on-highway tractive units and "energy trucks" (multiwheelers for oil and mining companies and the like which will be used mainly off-highway). Volvo and White models are assembled at New River Valley in Virginia and the cabs come from Orrville, Otlio. Production of N10 and N12 Volvos, some with charge-cooled engines, will commence at New River Valley this year. Autocar's main competitors at the premium end of the Class eight market are Kenworth, Peterbilt and Freightliner and the operators who run these do not like to buy off the shelf.
John Bryant, director and general manager of Volvo GB has been plant manager at Ogden since last year. His assignment was to use the expertise which had contributed so much to Irvine's success to introduce more cost-effective production techniques at Ogden without lowering the quality of a well respected product.
He has already achieved some measure of success and is full of praise for the co-operation of his workforce in the aptly named beehive state. But you cannot build trucks efficiently without orders for them and John Bryant and his team at Ogden are hoping that the forecasts of a steady revival in the US truck market will prove accurate.
Like just about every commercial vehicle plant in the USA at present the Autocar factory is working well below its maxi
mum capacity, which for Ogden is 35 vehicles a day, on a single shift. The blue collar workforce has been trimmed back to 115 and they were working a three day week, assembling five trucks a day at the time of my visit.
A typical Autocar specification order form for an AT 64 tractive unit will have over fifty additional items on it, ranging from chrome steel bumper in lieu of aluminium to Stemco oil seals on rear wheels, all carefully selected by the purchaser who will probably be a one man operator.
It is common for a $1,400 special paint finish and $1,000 worth of hide upholstery to be ordered and the customer might
come to the plant to collect his vehicle and be likely to drop in from time to time afterwards.
All the Autocar engineering is done at Ogden though price negotiation is now handled centrally at the Volvo White head office in Greensboro. Dan Cutler, Autocar's sales engineering manager, told me that about sixty per cent of engineering time is spent on custom building, though that is not always for small operators.
At the time of my visit the Autocar engineers were grappling with the problems resulting from a Florida mining company specifying a 6x6 with the front axle moved back by 381mm (Thin) from its normal position to reduce the vehicle's turning circle. The order was a precious one for 30 vehicles so no time was being lost in finding a solution.
How long will it be before Volvo components are used in White or Autocar vehicles? The Volvo engineers are being cautious about "Europeanising" their American products too quickly and emphasise that anyway it is a two-way business, but there must be a strong economic argument in favour of more vertical integration.
While the average White or Autocar customer might baulk at the sight of a Gothenburg built TD 121 FC under his hood in place of a Cummins or Cat, he might not even notice if the front axle beam had Volvo stamped on it.