"We deliver to 14 depots around the country and we need the advantage of the power-to-weight ratio
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that 350hp gives us."Ted Bolt ' Two of the UK's biggest mail order companies are part of the same group. Bradford-based Grattan, and Freemans, located at Peterborough, are both owned by the Otto group in Germany. Until recently they operated individual transport fleets but that all changed in March 2000 with the formation of Parcelnet which now incorporates some 330 vehicles. The largest part of the fleet is Oaf and lveco 7.5-tonners but it also includes 65 tractive units and 160 trailers.
"It has always been our policy to run two makes of trucks,' says fleet engineer Ted Bolt. "On a national basis I don't believe that you can beat Iveco and Oaf for service and backup—that's all-important to us. We did have some Volvo FS7s but that model dropped out of the market. We've run 'veep EuroTechs since the mid-nineties and the others are Daf 75 350s.
"We got involved with the Cursor 8 at quite an early stage; we ran one on an evaluation exercise for 18 months. It covered 300,000km in that time and only broke down once. That was due to the lift pump. It happened at 03:0IThrs. The local dealer at Bury St Edmunds sent the driver off with a replacement tractive unit. The following night he collected the truck after it had been fitted with a replacement pump. That truck averaged 10.0mpg and most of the 41 we have bought since are returning a similar figure. Some do as well as 11.0mpg but it depends on the trailers they are pulling. Our older 40-footers are Bit high while the 40ft double-deckers are 12ft high and those at 13.6m long are 10ft high.
"Weight is not a problem, as with a payload of 14 to 15 tonnes we rarely go above 26 tonnes, We deliver to 14 depots around the country and we need the advantage of the power-to-weight ratio that 350hp gives us to keep up to the schedule.
"Availability was an important factor in choosing the Cursor—Iveco always managed shorter delivery times than other manufacturers. Over the past three years all of our trucks have been supplied on contract lease and the main dealer does all the servicing; that has the advantage of knowing the fixed costs in advance_ Any repair bill, whether it is for £100 or 120,000, is covered in the contract price.
"The Cursors have not been totally without any faults; we've had a number of compressor problems, and with two sensors, mounted on the camshaft and the flywheel, that appeared to get out of sync.
"Worn gear linkage was another problem and we've had the odd head gasket go too. When they were new not all dealers had experience of the models and they didn't carry parts for them either.
"If we left the choice of vehicle to our drivers 95% of them would choose either a Volvo or a Scania, but the Cursor does us very well.
"Some of the earlier ones have completed 600,000km in three years and we plan to run them for five years. In the future I think it will be a natural progression for us to move onto the automatic transmission, but we have not specified any trucks with it yet."