"They are ideal for our operation. We are
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100% happy with them."Stephen Masterman
Plumbing merchant Plumb Centre has 12 feeder depots that supply the company's 200 branches across the country on a daily basis. One of them is located alongside its headquarters at Ripon.
Warehouse manager Stephen Masterman tells us: "We have 23 trucks operating from here, which form part of a much larger fleet. Although we also have ERFs and Dafs, we have always run some Volvos.
"We bought the first two FM10 320s last November, and have added a further two since then. They only cover about 85,000km a year, all own-account, multi-drop work, with each vehicle doing five to eight drops a day. They gross at 28 tonnes and run with a payload of 14 tonnes, but the first drop of the day could leave them half-empty. At that weight they are not worked hard and could do the job with even less than 320hp.
"The workload is pretty light, so we feel confident about keeping them for about seven years. They are covered by contract maintenance for the first few. The drivers who run them like them a lot, and the others can't wait for their trucks to be replaced.
"Until now they have been totally reliable, but if we have one criticism it would be that the cloth seat upholstery looks as though it is not going to be hard wearing enough, although it's still early days. Otherwise they are ideal for our type of operation and we are 1000/u happy with them.
"Our next batch from Volvo will be FM12 340s, which comply with Euro-3 legislation that comes into force this October."