ONE WAY TO QUALITY STREET
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While many big own-account operators are moving out of owning and maintaining their trucks, Rowntree Mackintosh is moving cautiously in the opposite direction.
• At last month's Institute of Road Transport Engineers' Solihull conference (CM 23 May) the session which stimulated most debate was on the pros and cons of contracting out vehicle maintenance. It was of special interest to two men from York: Bob Penny, director of transport operations for Rowntree Mackintosh Distribution, and Bob Ashton, the company's transport and engineering general manager.
Their particular interest in this subject stems from a major reorganisation of the Rowntree Mackintosh group at the beginning of this year, when the group's transport and distribution division became a separate operating company.
Like all the newly-formed operating companies, RMDL has been given more freedom to decide its own destiny, although its principal role — moving Rowntree Mackintosh goods to and from the group's UK distribution depots and to customer warehouses — has not altered. In his statement on the reorganisation, group chairman, Kenneth Dixon spoke of devolving "responsibility for the growth and direction of our individual businesses". Conventional wisdom has it that the direction in which a forward-thinking distribution operation should be moving is towards contracting out more of its "noncore" business, probably including vehicle maintenace.
All the sums that Penny and Ashton have done have led them to a different conclusion and Rowntree Mackintosh Distribution is engaged in some activities, like bodybuilding and air deflector kit manufacturing, which many distribution managers will find surprising. Penny makes it plain that he keeps his mind completely open on the question of the type and quantity of outside work taken on by Rowntree Mackintosh. "So long as we do not overstretch ourselves we will look at anything," he says.
To illustrate the diversity of jobs his workshops will tackle he points to a Pandoro semi-trailer servicing contract at one extreme, and box body manufacturing at the other; the latest body to come from the Rowntree Mackintosh York workshop is a 5.2m glass-reinforced plastic box on a Leyland Roadrunner chassis which is to become a demonstrator for Lex Tillotson at Hull.
There is an ironical twist in a truck dealer having a body built by a truck operator, which leads to an obvious question: why?
Ashton has no ready-made answer to that question, but it is clear that his background in contract hire (he worked for Charthire at Leeds before joining Rowntree Mackintosh last year) has given him a useful insight into where best to draw the line between body quality and price.
He insists that Rowntree Mackintosh cannot compete with specialist bodybuilders — and would not want to try — on price alone.
AIR DEFLECTOR
It was cost, pure and simple, however, that led the company to the decision to design and build its own GRP air deflector kits, originally for use on its fleet of ERF 6x 2 tractive unit tninkers, but now also for general sale. Ashton says that when all labour and parts costs are accounted for, his workshop can produce a roof-mounted air deflector for a remarkable 46% less than the price Rowntree Mackintosh was paying for a similar proprietary component.
Penny is equally specific about the running costs savings that have resulted from the company's development of its own air deflector kits: "Fuel is our biggest single running cost.
"Our first attempt at a threedimensional roof-mounted air deflector, which Wandfoil of Norwich helped produce after a series of tests we had conducted at the Transport and Road Research Laboratory in Crowthome in 1985, gave us a 6% average fuel consumption improvement coupled with a 4% average speed improvement, and we insist that our drivers never exceed the legal speed limits.
"Since then we have been back to TRRL to take video film of smoke tests with and without the roof deflector, and these showed us the shape of the deflector was not quite right. They also convinced us that the additional fuel consumption savings that can be had by adding gap-sealing skirts, a flap to the roof deflector and trailer side skirts are well worth having," said Penny.
The decision to upgrade the entire Rowntree Mackintosh tnmicing fleet from 32.5 to 38 tonnes was taken in December 1983, and the conversion was complete within two years. With unconcealed satisfaction, Penny recalls how this change cost "almost nothing in fuel consumption, because we got the engine and driveline specification right." The 6 x2 ERF tractive unit which is now the workhorse of the 70-strong Rowntree Mackintosh fleet is specified with the Perkins (Shrewsbury) Eagle 340Li engine and Spicer SST 1410 gearbox. "We do not believe we are over-specifying. We have an eye to the future," says Penny.
FUEL CONSUMPTION
For no obvious reason Rowntree Mackintosh mixes imperial and metric units in its fleet average fuel consumption figures. According to Penny moving from 32.5 to 38 tonnes caused this to go from 11.1km/gallon to 11Iun/ gallon (40.9lit/1001an to 41.3lit/100km).
One of the first major tasks that Bob Ashton had to face up to when he joined Rowntree Mackintosh was to find a 16tonner to replace the Bedford TL in the company's distribution fleet. As the leading producer of confectionery in the UK Rowntree Mackintosh has to have an efficient and flexible distribution system to meet demand, which fluctuates wildly during seasons such as Easter and Christmas, from confectionery shops of all sizes for products like Yorkie, After Eight, Quality Street and Kit Kat. To illustrate the kind of peak the distribution system has to cope with: Rowntree Mackintosh sells some 30 million chocolate Easter eggs a year — obviously during a very short period.
It has 230 rigid, box-bodied distribution vehicles at 10, 12.5 and 16tonnes GVW. Bedfords currently predominate, but Penny says the decision to drop that marque was taken "about one year ago, before Bedford decided to quit truck manufacturing, on the basis of unacceptable downtime."
As previously reported (CM 7 March) Leyland's Freighter 16.15 is the vehicle which was finally chosen to replace the Bedford TL at 16.26-tonnes GVW. Aston says that his final shortlist of three — from Leyland, MAN and Seddon Atkinson — was selected on the basis of the manufacturers which could meet his low chassis-height requirement on steel suspension.
Two of the factors which finally led to the choice of the Freighter, according to Ashton, were its proven, reliable, '400' Series engine and its good fuel economy. As with its trunkers, Rowntree Mackintosh has added its own aerodynamic-efficiency kits to the Freighters to improve fuel economy further, and the bodies, designed to last for 12 years (or two chassis lives) naturally came from RMDL's own bodyshop.