editor looks to whole life
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Mentor will launch its TA ic).5-tonne heavy-duty trailer axle at the IRTE show in June, and it will also be promoting whole-life projections on its LM (low maintenance) axles fitted with disc or drum brakes and cartridge-type hub bearings.
• by Bryan Jarvis Ayr-based Reid Transport runs a predominantly Daf/Montracon fleet. It bought the first top-spec RO-R axles and now has six trailers on discs with another 14 on order. "So far that first trailer has been 100% trouble-free as far as the brakes go," says managing director Rob Laid law.
On tipper work throughout the UK Reid's drum-braked trailers are relined 2-2.5 times a year.
But Laidlaw reports: "After nine months' hard work the pads are much less than half worn—and with none of the
usual nonsense with camshafts, bushes and slack adjusters either."
Like many hauliers, Reid is well aware of the value of using cartridge-type bearings, but he remains cautious—after all, it's a big departure from the normal practice of regularly maintaining standard wheel bearings.
Mentor's new TA axle can be specified with either standard or cartridge hub bearings, and with drum or 22.5indiameter disc brakes. It replaces the TM for most applications.
LM axles with disc brakes and cartridge bearings bump up the cost of a triaxled trailer by £400; cartridge-type hub bearings add another £600. But they do bring extended warranties: five years on standard LM axles and seven for its LMC9000s with the sealed-for-life bearing sets.
Monitor's latest cost tables illustrate their claimed whole-life benefits over a 10-year operating period.
For a triaxle trailer with drum brakes the warranties are based on A (annual or 100,000km), B (3yr/300,000km) and C (6yr/600,000km) services.
Running the trailer over 10 years costs £7,068, including 1687 in labour charges and £6,381 for new parts. With disc brakes the same triaxle's replacement parts cost 21% less, at 15,047, and labour fees fall 48% to .2356, bringing the whole-life running costs to £5,403.
Costs tumble further when you combine cartridge bearings with discs. This reduces the whole-life cost of running a trailer over 10 years by nearly £800, to £4,609, with labour charges accounting for just £198 and parts down to £4,411.
Significantly, if such a trailer is sold at or before its seventh year, as many fleet operators do nowadays, materials used will have cost no more than £492 (£369 with Mentor's 25% parts discount) and labour charges a mere .E86.40—a total of 578,40 (455.40) per trailer. The rest of the warranted maintenance charges will be taken on board by the trailer's new owner.
Mentor builds around 100,000 axle and suspension sets a year; 35% for UK use, the rest for other EU markets, More than 15% have disc brakes fitted and the proportion is rising.
Axles using 22.5, 19.5 and 17.51n wheels all use a common 19.5in ventilated disc. Whether they have standard or cartridge hub bearings. Mentor believes its axles are currently the lightest on the market. They could be lighter still when its aluminium hubs come on stream; one will be part of the company's IRTE Exhibition line-up.