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All his own work
Page 125
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Andrew Carter reckons that his neck is like a stick of seaside rock. Break it in two and you will find the word Cummins. The Banbury, Oxfordshire-based owner-driver loves the engine's reliability, not least when it is fitted in a Seddon Atkinson chassis.
He first came to the Seddon Atkinson/Cummins combination several years ago when working for Curtis Transport of Bicester, whose fleet was entirely Volvo save for Carter's Seddon Atkinson 400, fitted with the Cummins 290 diesel engine.
All of the drivers thought that the 400 was the ugly duckling of the Curtis fleet, bar Carter who liked it so much he bought it from boss David Curtis to set himself up as an owner-driver.
It was very much a "natural progression" to move up to a two-year-old 401 6 x 2 with the more powerful 239kW (320hp) Cummins engine.
The 401 worked hard, hauling SCAC trailers for 72 pence-a-mile until Carter decided it was time for another change. The Stratocruiser had just come out and Carter "had to Norfolk had a stretched 4 x 2 but with no third axle." Carter's new Stratocruiser hit the road on 1 April last year, complete with Cummins E400 engine, Eaton Twin Splitter gearbox, 200-litre top tank, Eminox exhaust, automatic chassis lubrication and a Granning lift-up axle, all for £44,500. The excellent resale value of Carter's old 401 meant he could pay £16,000 as a down-payment. Paying off the balance costs £600 a month.
On the day we visited, Carter was pursuing his next load on the Stratocruiser's mobile telephone. Within minutes someone rang back and Carter began an excited bout of haggling. "No, the rate for that load is too low. It sounds like it should be more than that. Better still, it sounds like someone else should do it." The load in question was a machine too high and too long to fit in Carter's hired tilt trailer and destined for a small village 70km from Calais.
None of the other loads offered created much excitement and then the man with the machine rang back. "OK, I'll do it," he said, "for another hundred quid and your ferry. And tell them to take it to bits so it will fit in the trailer without sticking out anywhere." The man on the phone agreed, and by sticking to his guns, Andrew Carter had got his way.
"On average I get between 8.5 and 9mpg," he says. "The 400hp engine can cope with any load. But the best thing about the truck is its attitude to hills. It eats them."