Breakthrough in specifying the right vehicle

22nd September 1972, Page 94

22nd September 1972

Page 94

Page 94, 22nd September 1972 — Breakthrough in specifying the right vehicle

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• A computer-based method of specifying as closely as possible the exact truck for the job it is to do, which has been developed in the USA, is to be offered to British fleet operators.

This news was given to delegates at Commercial Motor's Fleet Management Conference yesterday by Cummins Engine Co. speakers from America and Britain.

As a preliminary to offering this service, Cummins engineers and technicians have been logging immense quantities of detail about the main trunk routes in Britain, as the basis for one of the malt data requirements for the computer program. The first British route to be "profiled" was the CM London-Edinburgh-London operational trial route, used for testing heavy vehicles in typical UK conditions.

Details of the Cummins system — part of a Power Management scheme, some of whose other facilities will later be offered in Britain — are given in papers published on pages 187 to 190 of this issue of CM.

The remarkable accuracy of the Computer system's performance and fuel consumption predictions has been verified by comparing these with actual CM test results on a Continental vehicle run on trials in Germany.

Meanwhile, in an entirely separate vehicle-specification development, some, truck specialist dealers of Ford Motor Co are being equipped with mini-computers to give on-the-spot assistance in selecting vehicles tailored to the work.