British with Cummins is best in Scotland
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Why? Reliability, speed of maintenance and fast parts service, operators tell Steve Gray
/ES Cummins, co-incidenanother business celebra?5 years of operation in Ind is long-time Cummins & M. Catto, of Aberdeen. modest beginnings — Mr s first vehicle was an Alpowered Bedford rigid letc with licence — the any has grown to become of the principal meat :rs in Scotland.
almost every haulage less, Catto experienced ms in its early days. The rd, which could maintain ) speed of 33 mph regardof terrain, was virtually ed by a driver Mr Catto ) employ when, after being ;Mess for three months, he d his back.
ipite of this set-back, he vered and bought an Alfour-wheeler; he mainly
ran it on Liverpool runs from its Aberdeen base, Those were the days of general haulage for Catto's with further Albions — one a six-wheeler, and later, AECs joining the fleet.
The demise of the AEC led Mr Catto to a brief flirtation with other makes and in the mid-Sixties he became the first operator in Aberdeen to try Volvo F86s. This was a particularly unhappy experience, according to Mr Catto. The two six-wheelers and one tractive unit he bought all managed to break their crankshafts, and the ease with which the engines could be overrevved led to numerous valves being dropped.
Clutches too, he found, were not substantial enough, especially when drivers were changed around. Mr Catto also tried a DAF six-wheeler, but its high unladen weight put him off this maker's wares, and despite tempting offers since, he has remained loyal to home-built products.
His current fleet of 24 tractive units is about evenly split between Leyland .and Seddon Atkinson. Most of the Leylancis are Marathons, but Mr Catto has two 745 Roadtrains and is currently painting a third — this one being fitted with a Cummins E290 engine.
The policy of majoring on Cummins has meant that all the Seddon Atkinsons and most of the Leylands use this maker's engines. Although his aim is to go over to E290s with new vehicle purchases, many of the existing vehicles still have Cummins 250 power. These are pulling in about one mile per gallon less than the 290s which regularly return 7.5mpg. And that's virtually fully laden all the time, hauling reefer trailers from Scotland to London, Bristol and Southampton, where they then do multi-stop deliveries.
Catto also hauls into Europe, leaving via Hull and Rotterdam where the firm delivers in Holland and down to the German border.
France too has deliveries of meat and game from Catto and the company averages two trips a week to the Continent. For return loads the vehicles often bring apples from France and, of all things, surprisingly, frozen chips from Holland.
Catto operates with just one depot — the Aberdeen headquarters. Here, id addition to workshop facilities, Catto has a cold store capable of holding 300 tons of produce. It covers an area of 731sqm (2,400sqft) and has a volume of 1,1 42cum (40,800sqft).
This holds everything from buns to ice-cream and, although meat is stored, Catto never holds fish. According to Mr Catto, the fish smell is transmitted to the pallets and then the meat itself and is readily picked up by the butchers. Mr Catto's vehicles are on the road delivering these goods everyday, and Saturday is the busiest day. The lorries cover around 90,000 miles a year, and the company's 35 drivers operate the fleet on a semishift basis.
One will take a vehicle down to Carlisle where a second — who has already driven down the day before in another outfit — will take it over and complete the journey south.
According to Mr Catto, the vehicles cover around 2,000 miles per trip, and he insists on each being cleaned and checked over after every run. Good maintenance, he believes, is essential, but the inherent reliability of the Cummins units is for him, at any rate, above reproach.
His maintenance staff — two mechanics and one apprentice — like working on Cummins engines, he told me. And probably most important of all, he has virtually no major breakdowns on the road. One which did occur on Seddon Atkinson 400s was not attributable to Cummins but was a fault in the cooling system. Burst radiators caused damage to the cylinder head gasket, but the difficulty was overcome quite quickly.
Mr Catto has no complaints on the score of longevity, either. Most of the Cummins will happily run for 300,000 miles before an overhaul and even then its just a case of fitting new pistons and liners, bearings and seals. Mr Catto says that the engines are then good for many thousands more miles. And he's impressed with Cummins back-up service too. Only once has he been let down when a water pump was unavailable.
Mr Catto's formula for success has been to specify simple but efficient vehicles with Cummins power rather than go for more sophisticated models.
His normal replacement programme has been extended from three to five years for tractive units, although he keeps his reefer trailers for around 10 years. In spite of the delayed replacement schedule Mr Catto has no fears about the engines. He changes the oil in them every 10,000 miles using an Essobased lubricant from Jamesons' a local supplier, and firmly believes that the Cummins units will continue to give good reliable service.
Another enthusiastic Cummins operator is KSK, of Kirkcaldy, and its managing director, Mr Kelly, told CM that his Cummins-powered ERFs and Seddon Atkinsons have given excellent results. From its early days when the company operated one Albion Caledonian, Mr Kelly had built up to a maximum of 35 vehicles.
However, the recession which has hit the Scottish whisky industry — one of KSK's largest customers — has compelled him to cut the fleet back to 21 tractive units. The vehicles are all employed on bulk work hauling grain and malt, returning with by-products from the distilleries. Journeys, perforce, are over the twisty Scottish roads up as far as Wick on the North East coast.
In spite of this the KSK vehicles with E290 engines towing bulk trailers return 7.25 mpg while the 250s are 'down around the 6.5 mark. The oldest SA 290 with 200,000 miles on the clock and the first to go into service, can still pull the same con tion as its younger brothel' On Continental work M has found the consumpti proves to 7.45mpg. Excell liability has been another for the choice of Cummins
To date the only repairs sary have been to one v which has just had the c, head off and gaskets rej However, on the early da pump trouble meant three changes at once.
Mr Kelly also told us thi ers applauded the fast j( times and effortless powei Cummins. He's a firm b that a larger engine lasts I which can mean the diff between profit and loss.
Has KSK ever tried makes, especially imp vehicles? Mr Kelly told experience had shown 0three Mercedes tractive ul had bought in the past WE as good as British-built v( — at that time. He felt tlengines were good, ha KSK had no problems < twice-weekly Continental which they undertook, eitlKelly told us.
Summing up, he believ Cummins power units to ter than their competitors liability and speed of rm ance with fast spare service.