Whitbread wins again — but with less of a margin
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THE BREWERY Transport Advisory Committee has confirmed that this year's winner in the 38-tonne category of its Gordon Goddard fuel economy trials is the Cummins LTA10-29O,powered ERE 4x2 tractive unit entered by Whitbread of MarloW (CM, October 19). '
A retest of the vehicle with its curtain sided semi-trailer at MIRA on Monday this week confirmed suspicions that an error was made in either fuel weighing or recording during the first part of the Institute of Road Transport Engineers Type One fuel consumption test procedure last month.
This had given the ERE an incredible fuel consumption of 21.7 lit/100km (13 mpg).
The same test procedure last Monday gave the ERF an average mpg of 9.56 (29.6 lit/100km) but this, with an average of 47.6 lit/100km (5.93 mpg) over the second, more arduous part of the test procedure, was still enough to keep the Whitbread trunker ahead of its competitors.
Its overall average fuel consumption last Monday was 35.85 lit/100km (7.88 mpg) which gave it a "payload earning factor" of 6,271, considerably less than the 6,719 with which it was credited on the day of the trials but still ahead of the Ind Coupe Seddon Atkinson 301 6x2. which came second with 5,681. .
It is clear that different weather conditions last Monday compared with those on the day of the trial last month must have had some effect on the Whitbread ERF's second set of results.
A strong south-easterly wind on September 1.5 exceeded 22mph. Last Monday, the north-easterly wind did not exceed 7.6mph.
Last Monday'strial was supervised by Peter EdmOnds of the IRTE and Hugh Tehay of Mercia Transport Consultants (Fletcher .Computer Services).