Mix business with pleasure at LDoY
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HAULIERS, drivers, truck manufacturers arid their dealers will converge on Cranfield, Bedfordshire, next weekend for the 31st Commercial Motor Lorry Driver of the Year competition.
There is something for everyone at LDoY, whether or not they are competing. The Motor Show in October may be the biggest in Britain, but it is also the hottest, the noisiest and the most crowded — and you cannot drive the lorries.
At Cranfield, bosses and their drivers are able to inspect lorries with a bit of elbow roomy and drive them. Almost all the makers will be there, led by Volvo with eight models on view from their F6 to the F12 Globetrotter.
For the nostalgic, there will be one of the largest ever collections of old lorries. The Historic Commercial Vehicle Club is expected to mount a display of around 200 vehicles.
Pride of place goes to the 200 local class winners who are through to the finals from an original 2,000 entrants in regional heats. The heats have been going on throughout the summer and are run largely by volunteers.
The main aim of the competition is to promote safety and a pride in professional driving, and the test mirrors closely much of the hgv driving test. Open road behaviour, close manoeuvring and the legal responsibilities of drivers are all covered in the heats. The highway code test has been dropped from the finals but is an important element of the regional heats.
Although the "show" ele merits of LDoY go on throughout the weekend September 8 and 9, the finals themselves are confined to Sunday 9.
In the morning the finalists, all winners in their own class of vehicle (there are eight classes). are tested in their own lorries. Tests include estimating the speed they are driving at and distances between vehicles on the move.
The eight class winners will move forward to the final in the afternoon, an often exhausting test of nerve and stamina. The tests are of very tight manoeuvring, and instead of driving their own lorry, they have to do the tests in five different classes of vehicle, ranging from a light van to a 38-tonne artic. The vehicles are being provided this year by Mercedes.
Visitors in the past who have found the final play-off hard to follow will find it more interesting this year. For example, in one manoeuvre, the drivers have to park the lorries tight alongside each other. Curiously, artic drivers have often come unstuck in the past on light van tests, while the van drivers have coped fairly well with the heaviest lorries.
Picking out a likely winner is almost impossible, so much depends on each driver's mood next Sunday. Five winners are back again this autumn — Colin Burrows of Esso will be going for his third win in the competition. An interesting outsider is Kevin Richards, a foreman fitter from National Carriers in Peterborough who competes in his ninth LDoY final weekend. He is the only man ever to win through in all eight classes.
Women drivers will be rooting for Lt Helen O'Hara, a late qualifier from Hampshire and just about the only woman in this year's finals. She qualified in style too, beating more than 100 competitors in the regional heat two weeks ago. She drove a four-ton army truck not bad considering she is only 5ft 1in. She told reporters after her win: "I love driving, and the bigger the lorry the better!"
"It is the first time I have entered the competition and I couldn't believe it when I won," said Lt O'Hara. But she hopes to Win the title all the same.
Hauliers and drivers wanting to drive vehicles at LDoY may want to contact the manufacturer in advance. Overleaf are some of the lorries which will be available next weekend, at the time we closed for press this week. THEY DRIVE fear into the hearts of politicians, and they are the lorries which, above all, the antilorry lobby loves to hate. But are drawbar combinations really that bad? You can find out at the Lorry Driver of the Year in a mini-competition being run over the two days by Ray Smith Demountables.
Sales director David Browning will be organising the competition with demonstration driver Alan Mourton on hand to keep an eye on the driving. The event is likely to attract a lot of interest from managers and drivers.
Drawbars have been something of a Cinderella in Britain since speed limits and the need for double manning drove hauliers towards articulation 25 years ago. They received a setback when they were excluded from the increase in maximum weight limits last year.
The trouble is that at 18m they are 2.5m longer than the standard artic, and politicians are afraid that by raising the drawbar limit to 38 tonnes it will make the longer lorries more popular and upset environmentalists.
All this, even though most experts agree that drawbars are safer. They do not cut in and terrify pedestrians on street corners because the trailer follows the line of the lorry tractive unit. And they tend to be more stable.
Despite the drawbacks for drawbars, Mr Browning believes the market in Britain has grown approximately sixfold in the past five years.
Hgv 3 drivers, who are allowed to drive drawbars on
the roads, will take to them more easily than hgv 1 drivers, Mr Browning believes. For a start, the class 3 driver is likely to take a more cautious approach. And he will probably do better in the reversing test, Mr Browning predicts.
In a rigid, if the driver wants to turn left when reversing, he simply turns the steering anticlockwise and the same applies to a drawbar. Artic drivers, who have to turn the wheel the opposite way from the direction they want to turn, take time to adjust.
Also, the artic driver can swing his truck round sharply. "Little and often" is the order of the day when steering drawbars, Mr Browning says. "It's very easy to make a pig's ear of the reversing." That's the part that's really going to sort them out."
The drawbar combination used at LDoY will be Ray Smith's demonstrator, an 18m Daf 2100 turbo with two 25ft 6in platform bodies from Dutch manufacturer Contar. Anyone can enter the competition, either by pre-booking or on the day, provided they can produce a valid hgv licence.
Ray Smith tried five years ago to get drawbars into the main LDoY competition, in which safety is an important aspect. "It's bound to happen eventually," Mr Browning said. STEADY progress and a smooth gear change will be needed to win a novel competition run this year by Volvo over the twoday LDoY.
In a test of fuel economy and driving skill, competitors will have to negotiate a course with a reversing bay, snake turns, a level crossing and other hazards — all against the clock. And the Volvo F10 tractive unit will carry outside the cab a football on a saucer. If the ball comes off, the driver will have to stop and put it back on again. There will also be time penalties for touching barriers and markers.
The F10 will be fitted with a meter for measuring fuel used, and the winner will be the competitor with the lowest points total, calculated by multiplying the time by the amount of fuel used.
The competition will be open to anyone holding an hgv licence — so long as they bring the licence with them on the day.