"ERF's network gives a good coverage over the
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country." Dennis Taylor
ANC is the fifth largest parcels carrier in the UK, with a trunking fleet of 16o artics operating between 28-41 tonnes gross. The fleet has equal numbers of MANs, Scanias, Dafs, Ivecos and ERFs. Engineering consultant Dennis Taylor says: "We rely extensively on the outside market's sales and service and review the performance of the individual dealerships every month. Over the past seven years we've seen a big improvement in performance across the board and ERF is the equal to any in the pack. Seven years ago we had just seven ERFs; now we have 35 in the fleet. We uprated from 34ohp to 38ohp when the speed limit was lowered to 56 mph. The ECris are plated at 33 tonnes on four axles as we cube out before we weigh out.
"With the increase in power and because of advances in technology over the past five years we have gained in fuel consumption," he reports. "Across the fleet we averaged 8.rmpg when I came into ANC—now the figure is ro.4mpg, The ECUs do better than most in the fleet with a return of 10.91mpg at 28 tonnes and 10.7Impg at 33 tonnes. Next at 28 tonnes is the MAN, with 10.36mpg, and then Daf, at 10.31. Iveco comes in at just 9.58mpg. Only the latest Scania 380 4 Series at 11.68mpg comes in better than the ERF ECII on fuel. They do a high mileage and we have a fuel bill for 40,000 litres a day. In the three years that we operate them they cover around 750,000lan. We say three years because we need reliability We can't afford to have any trucks off the road. When I came we averaged 2.5 breakdowns a night. That figure has been reduced to just five in a year. "Road Relay is a good analysis tool which gives us a lot more information than just fuel," Taylor adds. It monitors idling time, time in top gear, the time that cruise control is used, the number of heavy braking applications and the time the engine spends outside of the sweet spot. It shows us that our ECT is spend 85% of the time in top gear. Where we have raised the time spent using cruise control, from 32% to 72%, it has saved us r.ompg. We use the information from the Road Relay to drive down fuel costs across the fleet. The engine idle time was 12%. On the ERFs the engine is normally set to cut out after eight minutes—we have reset it to three minutes. We tried Eaton's SAMT transmission but we were too early. We will take another look at the latest version, which we believe is much better. The standard box for us is the r6-speed synchromesh.
"The nearest ERF dealer, Beech's at Newcastle-under-Lyme, gives us tremendous service with minimum downtime. All the work is done between eight o'clock in the morning and four o'clock in the afternoon. These times are critical to our operation but we don't need any replacement vehicles. ERF's network gives a good coverage over the country. I don't see any benefit to us using a composite cab over steel, or vice versa. If I have a doubt about ERF's current product it is when I ask why should I buy the latest EC S with the old MAN woo steel cab, MAN chassis components, MAN axles and suspension for the sake of a Cummins engine when [can buy the latest TG-A, equipped with all of MAN's up-to-the-minute technology, for the same price."