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Robirch calls up the Commandos
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David Wilcox visits the piemen and finds em well pleased wi a non-hgv choice of replacement for eir WaLcnnu fleet.
Dick Ross took ne pictures
MPLE SIMON met a pieman I Dodge Commando." Sorry, )utcher that traditional nur-' rhyme, but I have visited a, htly more forward-looking ^nan than the one Simple ion encountered. Forwarding in that the transport fleet ibviously carefully chosen not only today's needs in d, but also those of the fu
lobirch is one of the leading manufacturers of meat prots, such as pork pies, saues, steak and kidney pies, ties, bacon and cooked ham. company has two factories, Burton-on-Trent and sham, plus 11 depots to ribute the products throughthe country.
iobirch's products are delivi to the shops by a fleet of ind 200 vehicles, the drivers 'taking the shops' orders for next delivery. In fact, iirch refers to its drivers as smen.
3ecause the amount carried each vehicle must be no -e than one driver, or sales
can physically sell and ver in one round, the vans do have to be too big. Also the ducts being carried are itly quite small, and not ordI in real bulk, so that they lain fresh. Therefore, iirch has always used nonvehicles for its distribution. 3ut about two years ago iirch was forced to make an iortant decision, which 3n1 a major change in its ice of vehicles. The compa; transport policy is largely ided at the Burton-on-Trent
d office. Transport manager -e two years ago (he retired a , weeks back) was Ted -ke.
'For years we had had an ost entirely Commer/ Dodge t," Mr Clarke told me. These .e all Walkthru vans. Two rs ago Robirch found that ige was to discontinue the j-serving Walkthru, leaving iirch with a problem. It had ut 200 of them — virtually entire fleet — which would Jually come up for replace t. Ted Clarke had to re* his current and future ds.
'At that time we suspected legislation might be intro:ed requiring pies and saues and the like to be delivI in a refrigerated vehicle."
Walkthrus were of course efrigerated, it not being pos e to have a completely open kthru facility in a refrigerated ice! "So just in case this slation did come about we ided to go over to refriger ated bodies,' explained Ted Clarke.
This automatically meant that a slightly heavier vehicle would be needed. Once again, with the future in mind, Robirch wanted to allow extra capacity for expansion. The company foresaw that deliveries in future years could, and hopefully would, get larger, necessitating a bigger delivery vehicle.
Ted Clarke settled on a 71/2tonner as a basic delivery van. In this way he was utilising the top weight for a vehicle which did not require an hgv licence — 7.38 tons, equivalent to 7.5 tonnes.
Robirch could thus still employ non-hgv drivers, would still have a vehicle with the compactness and ease of manoeuvrability needed for vehicles on multi-delivery work, but at the same time have a vehicle giving extra refrigerated space. Ted Clarke told me that he had also looked at Bedford and Ford vehicles in the 7.5-tonne range. "We had been 95 per cent Chrysler previously and were basically pleased with the Walkthrus," said Mr Clarke, so the Commando was a logical choice.
So, 18 months ago the first Dodge Commando joined the Robirch fleet. As the Walkthrus come to the end of their working life with Robirch, they are replaced with Commandos. As a company, Robirch now has approximately 65 Commandos, with about 120 Walkthrus still left, but the ratio is of course steadily going the other way.
For instance, at the Burtonon-Trent head office depot which CM visited, there are now 18 Commandos and just 16 Walkthrus. The Commandos
were first allocated to the salesmen on the longest and heaviest delivery rounds, where the extra capacity, comfort and performance are most appreciated.
Comparing the Walkthru with the Commando there is a world of difference between the old and the new.
The Walkthru has a gross weight of 4.9 tons, offering a payload of around 2.5 tons. This, remember, is not refrigerated space, just aluminium racking for the plastic trays in which the pies and sausages are carried. In comparison, the RGO8 model (badged as the G7575) Commando that Robirch uses is considerably larger. It grosses right on the 7.38-ton limit, giving a payload of 3.6 tons in racked refrigerated space. Most of the Robirch Commandos have aluminium refrigerated and insulate bodies by Wincanton Bodl, works, although the compan also has some fitted with gla5. reinforced plastics bodies, bu by local bodybuilder Jacksor of Loughborough.
Refrigeration equipment by Hubbard, in a particularl neat and unobtrusive unit. TItemperature inside the box bod is kept at around 38-40°F. Te 'Clarke told me that the refrige ation unit was capable of fi lower temperatures than thi! and so had little trouble cow teracting the inflow of warm a when the doors are opene during the deliveries. As a nic marketing touch, Robirch Viz added the slogan "kept cool keep fresh" to the sides of tlnew Commandos.
The Commandos are a gra improvement on the Walkthrk in other aspects. For exampl the cab looks as though it is fro a different age. The Walkthru primitive, to put it kindly, wi• lots of black-painted metal and vintage-style steering wheel.
Because it is a walkthru, tF cab really amounts to just a se in the front offside corner of big metal box, and in winter c,.c. get rather cold. In contrast, 0 Commando cab is thorough contemporary in Style and sin lar to that of its bigger brothe further up the Commanc range.
The level of comfort in ti two cabs reflects their d, ference, and the Commanc offers a far better working e vironment for the busy drive salesman. Ted Clarke told n that the Robirch men at Burt( average 30 calls a day, coverir something like 60 miles. Sale men 8 re responsible for d livering the products, taking tl next order (usually to be deli ered within the next couple days) and building new bu: ness.
The salesmen themselv have staggered starting tim for their day, according to he far they have to drive befo reaching their delivery area.
around 6am the first drive come on duty and these mi usually arrive back at the dep early in the afternoon. DrivE who start at 8am will be rollii in nearer 5pm. Very few of t Robirch salesmen at Burt( hold hgv licences.
But the Dodge Command( great improvement though th are on the VValkthrus in mc respects, are not without th, disadvantages. When Robir first took delivery of the init batch of Commandos not all t irivers welcomed them with )pen arms.
The big drawback to the rehicles is that because they lave refrigerated box bodies the :ommandos don't have the valkthru facility that the iobirch salesmen valued so nuch. So when he arrives at a ;hop for a delivery the salesman iow has to jump out of the cab Ind go round to the back of the ,ehicle to climb in via the rear loors.
The other main disadvantage )1 the Commandos is the floor leight. The Walkthru is consid”-ably lower with just one step ip into the rear of the van. But he Commando's floor is far ligher — about 14in above that yr the Walkthru — and needs an :xtra step. Although this may lot seem much, it becomes ;omewhat inconvenient when rou are doing 30 drops a day Ind jumping in and out of the ran all the time!
But gradually, said Ted :larke, the salesmen accepted he new Commandos and intead grew to appreciate the letter comfort, performance nd lower noise level they off;red, The salesman also has nore room to make up orders in he more spacious box body.
So now the men who still !rive the remaining Walkthrus it Burton are looking forward to ieing re-equipped with the bigler vehicles when their turn ;omes round.
To find out how the switch to ;ommandos affected the naintenance side of Robirch's ransport operations, I next poke to Mick Walker, who is lobirch's garage foreman at the urton-on-Trent depot. He is in harge of servicing and maintelance down at the garage where he vehicles are based a mile or e away from the head office.
Mick had previously had an ilmost standardised Walkthru leet to look after. The main ixception was the Mercedes3enz tractive units and York 10ft refrigerated trailers which lobirch uses for trunking the )roducts overnight from the 3urton factory to the other disribution depots.
Since the Commandos have ;ome, Mick now has another najor type of vehicle to look rfter. "No problem,'" he said. 'They have been very good rom a maintenance point of new and extremely reliable.\pparently the only recurrent )roblern that Robirch has exmrienced is that the front wakes on the Commandos are lot as good as they should be. led Clarke told me that the ompany has reported this to
Dodge, who are looking into it. Because it is a bigger vehicle altogether, the Commando is naturally coping easily with the Robirch deliveries.
Fuel consumption on the Commandos works out at around 19mpg, While I was there Mick calculated some figures for a particular Commando he is monitoring which is fitted with a Dynair electric fan. Whereas it was achieving 19.2mpg before the fan was fitted, the same vehicle is now averaging 23mpg, which Mick considered a worthwhile improvement.
The Robirch fitters are rapidly becoming experts on the Cornmandos, just as they did over the years with their experience on Walkthrus. If a vehicle breaks down on the road, Mick said he can very often diagnose the problem over the phone and give the driver elementary getyou-home-advice.
A proportion of the workshop's time is spent on bodywork repairs. Mick reiterated the point that the vehicles are driven by salesmen rather than professional drivers and so are bound to pick up the odd scratch and dented panel working on urban deliveries.
Both Ted Clarke and Mick Walker told me about an interesting experiment that Robirch is conducting. A closer equivalent to the Walkthru is the new Dodge 50-Series. This comes in a range of sizes, including 6.5 tonnes gross weight. On the face of it, this is an attractive vehicle for Robirch, coming, in gross-weight terms, between the 4.9-ton Walkthru and the 7.38 ton Commando.
But it is not the weight capacity that is of paramount importance to Robirch. It is the volumetric capacity — the useable space — that is most valuable to Ted Clarke and the salesmen. The pies, sausages and pasties that make up the greatest part of the orders are relatively light.
Robirch therefore investigated the potential of the 6.5tonne 50-Series and found that it could take a refrigerated box body almost as large as that used on the Commandos. Result — a vehicle weighing a tonne less than the Commando, but al the same time offering almost the same amount of refrigerated space. It would have a slightly lower floor level as well.
At the time that I was visiting Robirch, a 50-Series was away at the bodybuilders. It should now be back at Burton and in service, being evaluated as a possible future alternative vehicle. It would certainly seem to be promising, particularly on some of the shorter lighter 'rounds.
Mick Walker would not predict whether or not the 50Series would figure in Robirch's plans — he was going to wait and see how well the -trial" vehicle performed and whether the lighter chassis and engine would cope as well as the bigger Commando.
Ted Clarke estimated that it would be another four years before the last of the Walkthrus goes out of service. From a position two years ago, faced with the situation where the standard fleet vehicle was being dropped by the manufacturer, Robirch has obviously found a worthy replacement. And what is more, it not only performs well now, but is also well-suited to cope with future possible operating conditions, whatever they may be.
Robirch's 7.38-ton Cornmandos have the space for 'further expansion of the business, and the specification to satisfy any change in the regulations for carrying its products.
That legislation requiring the vehicles to be refrigerated was never introduced, Ted Clarke told me, but still could be. But consideration of it two years ago led Robirch to step up the size of their basic fleet delivery vehicle and to take full advantage of the non-hgv driving licence limit of 7.5 tonnes — clearly a move it hasn't regretted.