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"Iveco are as good if not better than most other

3rd January 2002, Page 16
3rd January 2002
Page 16
Page 16, 3rd January 2002 — "Iveco are as good if not better than most other
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trucks." David Mountain 16 Commercial fleet manager Dave Mountain has been with Sigma Kalon, based in Morley, for the past 26 years. At the end of the year he plans to start a well-earned retirement and will be replaced by Dave Simpson. The company's fleet, of 85 heavy commercials and 18-tonne box vans, delivers a range of Leyland and Johnstone paints to 185 trade outlets throughout the UK and Ireland. In addition each trade outlet runs a 35cwt van.

"At one time we ran nothing but Dafs in the distribution fleet," says Mountain. "But when they had their troubles in the early nineties we looked around for an alternative supplier. We monitored six vehicles from MAN and Iveco. At the time we thought that Iveco had the better dealer network and could give us the level of backup that we wanted, and that has proven to be the case. Now we are 98% Iveco (we also operate two Renault Premiums which are proving OK).

"All of our other heavy trucks are either EuroCargo or EuroTech models. Iveco came out with a brand new engine for Euro-2. We have II Cursor models in all: there are nine Cursor 8s rated at 35olip and two Cursor los at 39ohp. The 350s run at 32 tonnes and the 390s at 38 tonnes—they are both very torquey engines. Two of them are specified with the EuroTronic transmission.

"The drivers need a little instruction to get the best out of them but we have no doubt that this is the way forward. As well as making driving easier it saves wear and tear on the driveline. By taking the clutch operation away from the driver there is a reduction in wear and that means less downtime. We finance the trucks over five years and expect to run them for six or seven years.

'We have a very good relationship with our local Iveco dealer, Northern Commercials at

Brighouse. The price was competitive and the trucks are light We get a payload of about 18.5 tonnes at 32.0 tonnes gross, which suits our operation very well. They only do about 6o,000km a year. but we do manage to get some backloads from our suppliers. Depending on the route they return 8.5-9.0 mpg, quite an improvement over our old Daf 33005 (they gave us about 6.ompg) and our Da195.350s, which return 7.5mpg.

"Where we have had a problem it has been because not all of the dealer network was as clued up on the Cursor's engine management system as our local dealer. In the early days we had a problem with a couple of sensors on the engine. If they don't match up then the engine won't start. We now know that to get the vehicle home the solution is simply to disconnect one of them, but when we called out a dealer away from base they had not had sufficient training to know this. Fortunately Northern Commercials were able to advise the other dealer.

"We did have cracking problems with earlier Iveco discs but not on the Cursors. We are expecting electronic brake control on the new models. The cab badly needs a facelift: it is much in need of a new image. With the high roof the interior is OK for space, and bits like the door handles and hinges don't break off as easily as they did once but the seat squabs still wear.

On one or two the drive-by-wire system has given us a few problems and there have been a few oil leaks from the timing cover. Although we do all of our own servicing we don't have the diagnostic equipment to sort out any faults with the engine management system; we have to go to the dealer for that. Iveco are as good if not better than most other trucks." II

Tags

People: Dave Simpson
Locations: Morley

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