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INDEPENDENT
Page 70
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Some three years ago, Mansfield Breweries went public and persuaded the money men in the City to back its ambitious growth plans. It has just put the first AWD urban artics in Britain on the road, and continues to plough a lone furrow.
• To be Bedford, or not to be Bedford — that was the question facing Mansfield Breweries transport manager Peter Marshall when the GM-backed truck marque disappeared. "We'd always run Bedfords," he says, "and liked them. It was quite a blow."
Today he has returned to the fold — more or less — by buying the latest generation of AWD urban artics based on the chassis of the old Bedford TL. The 2.5mwheelbase vehicles feature the Perkins Phaser turbo-diesel engine and are plated at 21 tonnes gross.
He is thrilled with the gamble. "We took the first two tractors off the AWL) line," he says, "and they've given us no problems at all.
The main thing is they're returning 11.2mpg (25.2fit/1001cm), which is great. We've bought a couple of small Iveco Ford Cargos since Bedford went under, but they weren't really up to it. The ones we got only grossed out at 13.5 tonnes and we really wanted something which grossed out at 19 tonnes. The new AWDs go to 21 tonnes. The other problem with the Fords was that they were only giving us 9 to 9.5mpg (31.41it/100km to 29.7Iit/ 100km). That Phaser engine in the AWD is very economical."
BUILT FOR KEGS
Marshall began running his brace of AWDs at the beginning of February, coupled to specially-designed Southfields trailers built to carry 16 tonnes. The average load is 60% kegs and 40% cases, says Marshall and he can see the Mansfield fleet turning away from rigids to the urban artic concept more and more in the future. He says that the company's fleet of 55 commercial vehicles uses only 15 artics at the moment, mainly Leyland Daf 38tonners for trunking runs. The rest are rigids.
Mansfield only brews in Mansfield, but its kingdom stretches in a vast lozenge shape from Leicester in the South up the east coast through Humberside to Scarborough and the Yorkshire moors in the north.
"We're expansion-minded, very much so," says Marshall. "Ever since we first bought North Country Breweries five years ago we have been working hard to establish a really strong regional identity. The transport depot at Mansfield serves the southern half of the business and the depot where I am based, here in Hull, serves the northern half. We trunk up two or three loads every day from the production base in Mansfield using Daf artics and then redistribute from there."
Initially, Marshall reckons that the AWD TL21-26 urban artics will work out of his Mansfield base where the delivery runs are shorter and cover a more densely populated drop zone crammed with oldfashioned, difficult-to-access pubs and narrow high streets.
Marshall always buys his trucks outright and is confident that he will get a good resale value on the new AWDs: "There's no doubt about it, they're an improvement on the old Bedfords," he says. "Actually, other than the shell of the cab, which I understand AWD is revamping anyway, they've completely redesigned the TL from top to bottom." He seems happy to be running with an old friend, even if it is dressed in new clothes.
The trucks based at Mansfield are serviced and maintained on contract by outside contractors but the trucks based at Hull are serviced and maintained in-house. Marshall, like Mansfield Breweries, likes to keep his options open, mixing the traditional and the new.
0 by Geoff Hadwiek