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"The Vario is simply the largest van we can put on the road at under 7.5 tonnes"
Page 26
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Roger Bishop
Bishop's Move, based in Wandsworth, South London, has been in the removal and storage business for no less than 15o years and has ic) branches throughout the country.
"I have used Mercedes-Benz vehicles for zo years now," says proprietor Roger Bishop. "We run a fleet of 120 rigids and artics to provide a service to our commercial and domestic customers in this country and overseas; 95 of them are Mercedes-Benz. We have eight Vario vans at the moment and two more are on order. They replaced the earlier 814 7.5-tonner and later the Atego 815.
"The Vario is simply the largest van we can put on the road at under 7.5 tonnes. We were looking for something with a slightly better payload than the 814 gave and the Vario's load height is also lower by several inches than the 814.
"Also, because the Vario is classed as a van, a non-HGV driver can drive it and it gets into places the other trucks just can't go. We use containers that weigh about a tonne to put property into store, so a payload of about 3.5 tonnes is just what we want. By comparison, we were lucky to get three tonnes with the 814.
"The Varios oper ating out of Wandsworth cover about 12,000 miles a year, of which most is in the London area. We don't keep exact fuel consumption records but I do know that the Varios are more economical to run than the earlier 7.5tonners and they are less costly to buy in the first place, "We like to use M-B's finance package but we choose to service them inhouse. M-B's repair and maintenance package is also very good but it just doesn't give us the flexibility we need to provide the service our customers require.
"In some areas they could be better. The cab doesn't tilt and getting to the engine through a hole in the cab doesn't give the same ease of access. Overall they have been very reliable but
we did have one interesting problem—we use synthetic oil and topped the engines up to the mark when they were cold. It appears that synthetic oil expands more than mineral oil as it heats up, and this caused the level to rise. On two or three occasions the engine sensors lit up the STOP light on the instrument panel before we found the cause of the problem. Now the drivers know to
fill to slightly below the mark!
"There has been only one other fault: the brake discs distort. They are just not man enough for the job.
"We bought the trucks through Pentagon, which also supplies us with service items and replacement parts. Mercedes-Benz's prices compare well with most of the other manufacturers—they have to in a competitive world."