MAN with a Rye smile
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JOHN JEMPSON & Son operates one of the largest MAN fleets in the UK and yet has not bought a new MAN since 1980.
This family-owned haulage company based in Rye on the Sussex coast has a 60-strong fleet of which 40 are MAN tractive units. No fewer than 25 of these have been bought secondhand — which perhaps says more about the company's faith in the marque than buying new.
Jempson's is the personification of the traditional British general haulage contractor. Its origins go back to the days of horse-drawn vehicles and the company moved into the motorised age in 1924 when John Jertipson, father of the current managing director, bought a one-ton capacity Model T Ford.
Skipping lightly over the next 50 or so years, (which included five years of nationalisation in the early '50s when it was the Rye depot for BRS) the first Motor Show to be held at the then new National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham in 1978 was an important turning point — proof for those manufacturers who doubt the real value of the Motor Show.
When managing director Jonathan Jempson, general manager Barry Brignell and workshop manager Bill Wicken visited the Show they had a fleet of 60 AECs, predominately Mandator tractive units. The Mandator was fast becoming obsolete and the 145 range, which would probably have been Jempson's natural choice as a successor, had not arrived and so the company was considering several other choices.
The Mandator was a very light unit — under 5.5. tonnes kerb weight — and coupled to flat trailers Jempson's was used to payloads of 22 tonnes. So of the various units tried on demonstration the company naturally favoured the lightweight Daf 2100 unit.
On their first visit to the 1978 Show Jempson's therefore bought two Dafs and looked set to become a major Oaf operator. However, while they were at the Show a keen MAN salesman managed to arrange a demonstration of the 16.240; its big brother the 16.280 was Truck of the Year at the time.
The very day that the MAN demonstrator arrived in Jempson's yard the first of the two Dafs was in the company paint shop, wheels off and about to feel the full force of the spray gun. It was a comparison and close inspection of the MAN and Daf that made Jempson's have second thoughts.
Barry Brignell recalled that the MAN cab seemed altogether sturdier and a week's demonstration reinforced the feeling. The MAN dealer shrewdly offered to take the two unused Dafs in part exchange for four 16.240 units and so on February 1 1979 Jempson's put its two new MAN units on the road, followed by the second pair a month later. By the end of 1980 the company had bought a total of 15 new MAN tractive units, all 16.240s, and was on course to becoming a wholly-MAN fleet. Then the recession reached Rye and compelled Johnathan Jempson to rethink his policy. He wanted to keep the fleet strength up to 60 and he wanted to keep the MANs coming in and yet there was just not the capital available. The answer lay in used MANs and workshop manager Bill Wicken was dispatched to all corners of the country to track down good, used units. Bill has continued to do this and since then has bought 25 MANs, 15 of them 16.240s and the rest 16.280s. He buys from any possible source — MAN distrib!Jtors, other operators, dealers or finance companies. The vehicles are normally three to four years old and may have anything up to 200,000km (124,000 miles) on the tachograph.
Does he look for any points in particular? "Not really. General impressions count for a lot. Providing the condition and mileage seem to tie up, you are usually alright." Of the 25 he has bought he admits to buying just one "pup". It is a 16.280 — "I reckon we will still break even on it, though."
The other unusual feature about Jempson's vehicle policy is that the tractive units are kept for an unusually long time — until they are 10 years' old, by which time they will have 644-724,000km (400-450,000 miles)on the tachograph. After that they will be cannibalised for spares. This is how the Mandators were run and the shelves of AEC spares in Jempson's are gradually being replaced by MAN parts.
Running a fleet with a higher than usual age profile means that routine replacement parts and spares are important to Jempson's. Bill Wicken agreed that MAN-VW has recently reduced spares prices — he said clutch components are noticeably cheaper now — but contended that there is still room for more reductions in his view. On some items such as light units he is compelled to buy proprietary brands rather than genuine MAN-VW because the price is differential is too great.
The ability of Jempson's to buy used vehicles and operate them well into realistic life expectancy stems from fairly extensive workshops. These even include a professionally equipped shotblasting bay which was expensive to install but which means that Jempson's can quickly deal with any corroded metal on cabs, chassis and trailers. Outside maintenance work is taken in to boost the workshops' utilisation.
Some of the company's MAN units are to be seen in Jempson's light green colours while the rest are in British Gypsum's white livery. There are 23 units working on contract to British Gypsum, running out of the factory near Battle. They haul plasterboard and other plaster products to building sites and merchants throughout the South East.
For the vehicles in the general haulage ("green") fleet Jempson's still has the true general haulier's "anything, anywhere, anytime' attitude. About 85 of the 100-strong trailer fleet are flats, purely because of their versatility. The majority of the company's loads seem to be on the heavy side; concrete pipes, stone,slates and drums of chemicals. The small harbour down at Rye does not represent a threat to Dover but generates a useful amount of traffic for Jempson's which finds the sizeable trailer fleet useful for positioning spare trailers on the quayside ready for ships needing to offload their cargo quickly to catch the tide.
From September through to February hops out of the Sussex/Kent area are a regular load, destined for the brewers. Hops were also the subject of Jempson's dabble with Continental work in 1979/80, running across to brewers in Belgium and Germany. The new MAN's seemed ideal for this, but Barry Brignell said that the rates for this Continental work plummeted two.or three years ago and since then the company has decided it is just not worth going across the water for the money on offer.
With the emphasis on fairly heavy loads, Jempson's is in a position to take advantage of the 38-tonne legislation and is gradually upgrading the fleet for 38-tonne capability. It will not happen overnight but so far 18 of the flat trailers have been converted into tri-axles and 10 of the units (three 16.240s and seven 16.280s) have been uprated.
Barry Brignell said that the company had its doubts about the 16.240 at 38 tonnes. That is its design weight and whereas most 38-tonne units seem to be polarising around the 224kw (300bhp) mark, the 16240's six-cylinder 11.4-litre engine develops 177kw (237bhp). (This has been raised to 184kw — 246bhp on later models).
In fact, Barry Brignell said that the 16.240s cope surprisingly well; they are, he said "half a gear down on the 280s" for the two-hour run from Rye up to London that is hilly and twisty in parts.
The 16.280 uses the same 11.4-litre engine but with the addition of a KKK turbocharger that raises the output to 206kW (276bhp). The 280 has now been superseded by the 16.281, which adds intercooling so that the engine develops the same power but at 2,000rpm instead of 2,200rpm. Its torque is also higher.
Both Bill Wicken and Barry Brignell are fairly satisfied with the MANs' fuel consumption, bearing in mind the payload. The 16.240 units average 40.4 – 35.3 I/100km (7-8mpg) while the 16.280s are about 0.25mpg down on this.
The expenditure in the past few months on the trailer tri-axle conversions has necessarily retarded Jempson's programme of tractive unit replacement and so there are still a handful of AEC Mandator units left. Barry Brignell hopes that the company will be in a position to buy some new units — brand new units — by the turn of the year. He said that for a family-owned haulage company, keeping a 60-strong fleet up to date is rather like painting the Forth Bridge — by the time you have worked your way through the fleet the first units are due for replacement again.
The new 16-ton gvw MAN four-wheeler is due to arrive in the United Kingdom in the autumn, but as a leading MAN operator Jempson's will be having one of several early examples; when I spoke to the company they were expecting it this month. If it proves successful — and Barry Brignell has high hopes — Jempson's will be able to further its MAN standardisation policy into the 16-ton category. The company operates a few 16-tonners although Barry said he is no lover of this size of vehicle: "They cost almost as much to run as an artic but have half the earning capacity. But we need them for some of our customers who have deliveries with restricted access."
The switch from Mandator to MAN must have been a bit step for Jempson's, especially since the company had such a tradition of British vehicles and is clearly looking for a long-term choice of vehicle. Commenting on the decision Barry Brignell told me that John Jernpson, who as a 20-year-old was responsible for buying the company's very first motorised lorry in 1924 was also on hand to inspect the MAN demonstrator that came to Rye after the 1978 Motor Show and approved the choice.