• Home
• Used vehicles
• Product news
• Dealer news
• Compliance
• Buying advice
• Archive

LE LE 11 ilk

IN ALMOST every country visited by CM staff we have Found Bedfords delivering. Coca-Cola. Jacki Passmore tells how the Luton-built vehicles help to quench the thirst of Hong Kong's 41/2 million inhabitants:

Hong Kong is a hot and :hirsty place to live, and as it's )Iso a crowded place and the :.'hinese love soft drinks, there's a specialised distribution job to do which is tackled by road transport.

The streets have a bewilderJig number of small stores, cafés and kiosks; they are individually owned and they all want soft drinks. The regular supply of soft drinks helps the population to cope with temperature averaging 28°C in the eight months of summer with humidity hovering around the 90 per cent mark.

The stores and cafes have virtually no storage space and they need 'frequent deliveries. With Hong Kong's four and a half million people living in an area about the size of Croydon, the size of the supply task can be imagined.

• One firm tackling this task is Swire Bottlers Ltd. Originally named Hong Kong Bottlers Ltd, the company was established nearly 30 years ago, and has since captured 40 per cent of the soft drink market — 130 bottles per head of population per year.

Taken over by the Swire group the company was relocated at Tsuen Wan Town. It employs over 800 workers and operates six days a week. Its fleet of 120 local delivery vehicles deliver bottled "Coke" made in Hong Kong with the secret concentrate imported from America.

Swire Bottlers have developed a specialist team of salesmen drivers, all equipped with the Hong Kong equivalent of the hgv licence. In the outlying islands, the job is contracted to owners of oceangoing junks.

Each lorry carries three assistants, two in the cab and one in the back. The assistants unload and return the empties while the driver/salesman goes ahead to talk to dealers — up to 15 sales at one stop. This accounts for the lorries' low annual mileages — about 4,000 a year.

The sales staff are paid a basic salary plus sales commission, and each lorry delivers up to three full loads per day during the summer. Only a handful of lorries operating in the New Territories exceed 11,000 miles annually, and on all of them the amount of stop/start work is phenomenal.

More than halfof the 14,000 outlets serviced receive

three calls a week; the small stores in the heart of the city get a daily delivery.

Hong Kong can be divided into roughly three parts. The most populous area is Kowloon, three miles long by five miles wide. Three million out of Hong Kong's 41/2m population live there, and it also contains most of the industrial undertakings.

Hong Kong Island contains about 1m people, 90 per cent of whom live along the waterfront strip, about half a mile deep and six mile long, and containing thousands of small family businesses. The rest of Hong Island is sparsely populated and very hilly.

The third part, known as the New Territories, the agricultural part of Hong Kong , contains the targest land area plus the 236 islands scattered around Hong Kong itself. Deliveries must be made quickly for maximum profitability, but congested streets impede efficiency. Vehicles often have to be pulled up on the footpath with the delivery teams dodging through heavy traffic with their hand trolleys. Dangerous sometimes, maybe; frustrating certainly, but most efficient in the rough and tumble which is Hong Kong today.

The most densely populated areas are flat ground, but beyond them steep gradients, often up to one in seven, abound.

For reasons of flexibility, the same type of vehicle is used for urban and rural deliveries, and so all have to be up to the task of carting ten tons of Coke over the roughest terrain.

As yet there are no power/ weight regulations, and over, loaded vehicles are not usually stopped by the law unless they really look over-loaded! So many operators save expense by buying vehicles with a view to intentional overloading.

Not so with Swire Bottlers. Such is their concern with their public image that, years ago when they were using body lengths of only 18ft, they chose the 466cuin Bedard KHL 167in chassis in preference to the KG L with the 330cuin engine. The KGL could have coped, but it 'would have caused inconvenience by crawling up hills in first • gear.

This concern for adequate power has resulted in a fleet almost entirely powered by Bedford 466 or, more recently, 500cuin engines in chassis fitted with the lowest singlespeed axle available, 6.8:1.

The radial tyres originally fitted to the vehicles did not stand up to the sidewall abuse so common in Hong Kong street deliveries. Consultations with Eastern Motors Ltd resulted in factory optional cross-ply tyres being fitted.

The fleet consists of 20 light commercials, mostly Japanese, and 120 lorries either of 14 or 16 tons gross. One hundred of them are Bedfords, nearly all KH and KM with a sprinkling of KC and KD vehicles for specialist duties.

A visitor might be surprised to meet a 30ft-long Bedford KML nosing its way down a narrow alley, looking for a place to park.

It would seem far more sensible, to an outsider, to use 11/2-ton units operating from strategically placed storage depots. But warehouse space in the city can cost up to 50p per square foot per month.

Put the distribution centres in the outer areas and half the vehicle's time will be spent in running empty. So they park in an alley rather than waste time.

The popularity of soft drinks has led to an increase in vehicle size. Seven years ago, 3 Bedford KHL 167in chassis was considered big, running with a body designed to carry eight pallets. By 1972, these gave way to the KHE with the 189in wheelbase, and 10 pallet loads. Today even the 12-pallet body mounted on the Bedford KML 208in chassis is proving rather small.

Construction and use regulations limit overall vehicles length to 30ft and the manual unloading system has limited pallet height, so the 208in KML is about the biggest that can be used. Artics are out of the question, and for flexibility reasons any bulk carrying is done by the KML rigids with the pallet dividers removed.

Conditions demand an average of 15 gear shifts per mile, so transmissions and brakes require the most servicing and Swire Bottlers have now ordered six KML for 1977 fitted with Allison MT 650 automatic gearboxes. Computer analysis showed that the lighter AT 540 gearbox, although adequate for most operations, would not be suitable for the more rugged duties.

Despite the research put in by the customer, the dealer and the Vauxhall factory, the boxes could not be supplied in time by the Allison factory in the States. However, the vehicles were supplied in manual form in time for the summer, and the gearboxes were ordered separately to be fitted later in the year.

The decision to go 'automatic was made after Swire Bottlers fitted one KML with an MT 650 in 1976 on a trial basis. The results were so good that the company decided to go ahead with six more.

Although retarders are not ,listed as a regular production option by the Vauxhall factory, investigations are now going ahead by the customer and the dealer into the feasibility of using exhaust electric retarders to save brake lining life.

A third major maintenance cost item is bodywork. The all-steel pallet bodies used up to 1976 not only cost £3,5( each, but collision damage ar the salty humid atmosphe combined to produce mainte ance problems to make a Briti! operator wince.

New modular aluminiu bodies have now be€ mbrought in. The extrusior required to make the boc frames have to be special imported by Kowloon Au• Bodies Ltd. The cost is higl however, with a 12-pallet boc costing £5,300 including tax.

Modular construction rteij repair work and, as palli dividers are no longer stresse members, they can be remove for bulk and miscellaneous deliveries. Geometric limit tions prevented the one-to weight saving of the aluminiur body being used for extr &payload until April this yez when the new one-litre bottl was introduced.

All vehicles cabs are rus proofed before delivery wit Tuff-Kote Dinol.

Preventive maintenanc€ carried out by Swire Bottler! own workshop on Hong Kon Island, has resulted in a min mum downtime. In order I reduce it still further, th company is now looking at th possibility of operating its ow ,exchange-unit scheme. Wit such a standardised fleet c vehicles, this should not prey too difficult.