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The pay-off from the 'premium' truck

1st October 1971, Page 17
1st October 1971
Page 17
Page 17, 1st October 1971 — The pay-off from the 'premium' truck
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

A big truck pulls into a service station and as it comes to rest a number of lights flash into life on a big "scoreboard" on the fuel island, telling the attendant that the vehicle not only needs fuel and water but also that the air filter and the sump ,oil are both due for changing. This picture of maintenance on demand, ruling out the need to check daily, weekly or longerterm service items, is a goal towards which a big American organization, which plans to enter the UK truck rental market, is working in the USA. It visualizes standardized sensors on a wide range of truck models, which would automatically send an electronic signal to the "'scoreboard"' at selected service stations and thus reduce the time and cost of attention to vehicles.

British operators may regard such developments as pie in the sky, and not entirely desirable because of the added complica tion which could increase reliability problems the aircraft and space industries have long reached the stage where each gadget is functionally monitored by another gadget, and that in turn by another, in the search for utter reliability. But linked with this sophisticated electronic approach is one which is attracting increasing attention among British operators — the specifying of components for their long life and reliability, with very much less regard for their initial cost. By coincidence, CM this week carries a road test report on a vehicle which exemplifies this trend, the Crusader 4 x 2 for which BRSL specified main components that had shown up well in fleet-wide reliability and life assessments made by the company. The American organization referred to above has taken this one stage further, not only specifying truck components of proven reliability but developing its own premium specifications and introducing items from other fields of activity — such as space research. Its conclusions are that this pays off, and so does the application of extremely high levels of maintenance.

Labour costs in Britain are still well below those in the USA, but they are increasing at a remarkable rate. This is but one of the factors that will make on-the-road reliability increasingly more important than purchase price: the "premium" truck is becoming the standard that virtually everybody wants.

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