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Don't overload your Mercedes Sprinter
Page 24
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I WAS VERY impressed with your article on couriers and how the cowboys give the industry a bad name (CM 3 June). Maybe your interviewee can explain how he can get 1,700kg on a 3.5-tonne long-wheelbase van when our 3.5tonne medium-wheelbase vans tare at 2,120kg? G Ball CBS Light Haulage
DOES CM HAVE a crusade to fill the roads and motorways with dangerously overloaded Mercedes Sprinter vans? In the 3 June edition we have BlackCat couriers quoted as saying "the long-wheelbase Sprinters at 3,500kg gross offer a 1,700kg payload." Earlier in the
year you reviewed along-wheelbase 316Cdi and quoted a similar payload. In fact a long-wheelbase 311Cdi is quoted by Mercedes in its current spec sheets as having a payload of 1,335kg.
As an operator of Sprinters we know that these "marketing figures" are arrived at using that elusive 75kg driver and that the van is German-spec with no wooden floor, ply-lining, bulkhead or any extras.The true payload is much nearer 1250kg, and if goods are carried on pall.
The payload you quoted in your review was in fact the body and payload allowance for alongwheelbase chassis-cab. The trouble is that carefully and evenly loaded a Sprinter with
1,700kg of load does not "show" as obviously overloaded.
When last at our local dealer a Sprinter arrived with a broken rear step that had caught on the ground. The van was loaded from floor to roof, back to front (13.4m3) with boxes of cheese.The owner told me with a twinkle in his eye that he was told that this was a 3.5-tonner so that was the payload he worked on!
When last at our local dealer a Sprinter arrived with a broken rear step that had caught on the ground. The van was loaded from floor to roof, back to front (13.4m3) with boxes of cheese.The owner told me with a twinkle in his eye that he was told that this was a 3.5-tonner so that was the payload he worked on!
The courier sector surely has enough cowboys without a respectable publication such as yours compounding the issue. Roger Williams Purley, Surrey
• We've spoken to BlackCat's managing director who now realises that he was mistaken over the LWB Sprinter's payload.
Don't forget, however, that if you need ultimate payload more than volume there are a number of shorter 3.5-tonne vans weighing in below 1,850kg. Colin Barnett Operations editor