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With five of our pallets on their way we loaded
Page 49
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our control truck with the remaining single pallet and hightailed it out of Norfolk. The purpose of the control was to assess the alternative of hiring a truck in for the day and doing it yourself. It also gave us a good opportunity to take a decent turn behind the wheel of the recently crowned International Truck of the Year 2006, the MAN TGL.
Our truck was a 180hp 7.5-tanner equipped with the lightweight chassis to maximise payload, and although that wasn't put to the test on this occasion it has improved MAN's competitiveness in this tough market sector. With so many horses under the cab and so little weight in the back, you won't be surprised to learn that the TGL skipped along comfortably on the run north. 1111— THE CONTROL With the MAN equipped with the sixspeed box we were able to block shift with ease and the truck was soon purring along in top at the legal maximum.
As an experiment we cruised at the HGV motorway maximum of 56mph on the outward leg, while allowing ourselves the liberty of 70mph on the motorway on the way back. The time difference was about half an hour, which was sufficient to prevent us having to stop for a mandatory 45-minute break on the return leg, thus saving 75 minutes in total journey time.
Spend a bit of time behind the wheel of the TGL and it's not hard to see why it's been voted truck of the year: The cab is very well arranged, there's plenty of storage space and visibility from the driver's seat is superb. Cab comfort is a definite strong point, and the
handling of the TGL is a definite improvement over the outgoing model.