TORQU EY
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TRUNKER
ere driving WHOSE truck?" Whenever Commercial Motor talks to readers about roadtests you say you prefer to see operators vehicles on trial. So do we. What better way to demonstrate the strengths, or weaknesses, of a truck than to have a no-frills– and more importantly "non-tweaked"—customer vehicle? But Eddie Stobart?
Consider the implications of testing a truck belonging to Britain's favourite haulier (well, favourite with everyone outside the business). Would we have to don a green shirt and tie? Would we have to stop and help old ladies across the street? And what if we were to have a bump out on the road? The fate of the Eddie Stobart fan club clearly rested in our hands...and all because we wanted to try Scania's latest 400hp 4-Series R-range tractor.
Ten years ago if you were talking fleet machine you were talking 325hp and a 10-litre Cummins. The fact that people such as Stobart are now buying 400hp 12-litre tractors for trunking work shows just how far we've come. The advent of speed-limiters, just-in-time delivery and ever-increasing traffic congestion have all put operators under the cosh. In order to make any kind of profit nowadays a 38-tonner needs to maintain a high cruising speed up hill and down dale, mile, after mile, after mile.
If horsepower ratings have gone up in fleet tractors it's also because truck manufacturers have managed to achieve the seemingly impossible—screwing good fuel consumption out of high-cube diesels. Time was when you'd be lucky to get more than 7mpg from a 400hp-plus tractor around CM's Scottish test route. Today 8mpg is well within the grasp of a high-power Euro-2 engine, as the recent test