"As far as the driveline goes, it's as good as any other truck on the
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market" MIKE BEER IN Mike Beer, based near Dover, operates 45 vehic.les on bulk tipping and palletised cur. tainsider work in the UK and on the Continent. Company policy is to operate prestige trucks that provide a high profile. Daf XF 430s make up the core of the fleet with some Volvos and four Iveco
tractive units.
Three are EuroTech 380s with one 4x2 EuroTronic EuroStar 470.
"When they introduced the ZF semi-automatic gearbox Iveco invited me to test it out, which I did, and I was very impressed with it" says Beer. "I was due to replace one of my earlier Ivecos so I thought give this one a try. I have to say it's proved to be very good. I have heard that other people have had trouble with EuroTronic but mine is two years old now and we have had a couple of alarms come up but nothing major.
"Fuel consumption is not bad," he says. "We are running at 40 tonnes and are averaging just about 8.ompg. Being 47ohp I had hoped for slightly better as my Daf XF 430s are returning 0.4mpg more. But it's a nice truck and the driver enjoys driving it, although we do have to restrain him to use a light foot on the accelerator. It's so fast through the gears with that amount of power. We've just replaced a complete set of discs/pads and fitted a new drag link and that's been the only major spend. I was surprised to learn that the cost for wearing parts was not included in the Millennium package—i should have taken a closer look at the small print, but otherwise it is working out all right.
"As far as the drive. line goes it's as good as any other truck on the road," Beer reports. "The only area I think Iveco can improve is on the quality of the cab trim. My other trucks are better in this area; they don't creak and groan like the EuroStar. Its bunks are thinner, the seats are not as comfortable and they don't wear as well. We keep them for three years. The price was right at the time. Although Iveco trucks may be cheaper up front the residual values are lower; but overall they don't cost us any more to run than any of our other trucks. If we have fewer Ivecos than we used to it's because Iveco has an image problem—it's not down to reliability." $