Standardisation: sure way to reduce costs
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Christian Salvesen's Danny Stewart tells CM's David Wilcox how to construct a fleet of 400 vehicles, with three models, coverini the range from 16 to 38 tonnes, on a multiplicity of types of operation
■ ITION the name Christian fesen to a man in the street he will probably conjure up icture of a Norwegian exer battling across the frozen tes of the Arctic. Christian resen has that kind of ring to us is the wrong image but s come close on a couple of its — Norway and the ice. the modern Christian Salveis more interested in artics the Arctic.
lere was a Mr Christian Salm, born in Norway in 1827, son of a small shipowner. To a long story short, Christian 'esen came to Scotland and I up his own shipowning ness before switching in the )s to whaling.
)reseeing the problems that ahead for whaling, the corny withdrew completely from in the late 1950s and sought businesses. Most of these a in some way connected its shipowning and whaling icedents and this is still evi t at Christian Salvesen's to 3 is divided into five divils; marine, oil services, )erties, seafoods and food ices. This last division, food ices, is the largest and ines a chain of cold stores in UK plus four in France, one 3elgium and nine in the ed States.
so in the food services divin is Christian Salvesen nsport).
though now a leading name ublic temperature controlled lege, Christian Salvesen (Transport) is a young company. It was set up as recently as the late 1960s when Christian Salvesen took over the dozen or so vehicles in the fleet of Blairgowrie, Perth haulier Daniel B. Stewart.
Danny Stewart became managing director of the newly created Christian Salvesen (Transport), and now he controls close on 400 vehicles. All are temperature controlled and operate from seven transport depots — mostly adjacent to cold stores — in the UK plus Zellik in Belgium. Of the 400, 100 work exclusively for British Home Stores out of that company's national distribution centre at Atherstone, Warwickshire. These provide a dedicated temperature controlled distribution service to BHS branches and operate in BHS livery.
Apart from being such a large fleet of temperature controlled vehicles Christian Salvesen (Transport) is notable in one other respect. It is one of the largest Mercedes-Benz operators in the UK, with 360 Mercedes in the 400-strong fleet.
Danny Stewart had a refreshingly realistic attitude to his vehicle policy. "I'm not going to say that Mercedes-Benz trucks are the best", he said. "It just so happens that at the moment we think they're best for our particu lar operation. But I would never say they are the best trucks on the market. That depends on the operation and I don't know about anybody else's opera:dons."
While working closely with Mercedes-Benz on day to day technical matters Danny Stewart says his company's policy is to keep Mercedes-Benz or any other manufacturer at arm's length. "I don't believe in being in their pocket. You've got to be careful with manufacturers. l'r not a loyalist; I have a totall commercial attitude. If Mei cedes-Benz stops giving us th service we want then we'll dro Mercedes tomorrow — an we've made that perfectly cleE to them," he declared.
Surely it's not quite tha simple when 90 per cent of a 40 vehicle fleet is from that on manufacturer? "Don't you bE lieve it," said Danny. "We'v done it before and it was surpri;
igly easy." Christian Salvesen ised to be just as heavily comnitted to Volvo in the early 970s with a trunking fleet based in F86 and F88 units. Now, here's not a Volvo to be seen. "I'm not saying the Volvos vere bad but the manufacturer 3iled to five us the service we leeded and we got out of Volvo vithin 21/2 years."
After that, Christian Salvesen ried a variety of other manufacurers, notably Ford, Leyland Ind Seddon Atkinson. None ame up to the required stenlard and it was in 1974 that the irst batch of Mercedes-Benz ame into the fleet.
Looking first at the artics, :hristian Salvesen is unusual in )lacing great emphasis on the mportance of the 24-ton artic, !sing 10.2m single axle semirailers. About half the artic fleet ire 24 tonners. Why is this?
Danny Stewart feels that many )perators opted for lightweight 12 ton tractors to pull single axle rallers. To his mind this was leedless overspecification if rot] run a 24 ton gross artic buy 124 ton unit.
This reasoning was echoed by leet engineer Peter Slocombe vho made the point that the iniial purchase pncb -nd In-ver • unning costs of a 24 tc — ;ompared with a lightweight 32 onner are very worthwhile ;avings. He too considered that t was easy to fall into the werspecification trap.
Christian Salvesen (Transport) ind Mercedes-Benz share one lesire; to rationalise and stanJardise wherever possible. A ook at the Mercedes range and his is immediately apparent. Everything from 16 tons upwards shares the same basic cab, either in short, medium or long versions. Inside the cab, instruments, controls and their layout are all standardised.
The Christian Salvesen fleet make up tells the same story. The company's operations include everything from local distribution, inter-depot trunklne, one-off loads and national distribution to international haulage.
Most companies would run three or four classes of vehicles on this work. At the bottom end would be the 16 ton distribution refrigerated boxyart Then the 24 ton units for pulling the 10.2m refrigerated trailers. Then there would be the heavier tractive units, maybe some 32 tonners for UK work and some 38-40 tonners for the international operations.
When Christian Salvesen runs to EEC countries plus Spain and Yugoslavia it is usually at 38 tonnes.
Christian Salvesen has taken full advantage of Mercedes-Benz standardisation and then rationalised its choice even further.The company is rapidly working its way towards standardising the entire fleet on just three (or really 21/2) models: the 1626 unit, the 1617S unit and the 1617 rigid. Between them, these do everything that Christian Salvesen asks.
Starting at the top end, while accepting that the 1625 is a perfectly adequate tool at 32 tons (see page 56 this issue) many would query it for 38 tonne operation on the Continent. This is Mercedes-Benz' design weight for the 1625 and few manufacturers are entirely happy about their vehicles working at the design weight. Is the 184kW (247bhp) developed by the 1625's V8 engine sufficient at 38 tonnes? It works out at 6.5bhp per tonne.
Peter Slocombe says it is, pointing out that the torque figure of 932Nm (6871bft) is good and much improved on the 808Nm (596Ibft) of the 1626's which used to be Christian Salvesen's basic Continental and UK haulage unit.
The 1628 Mercedes with 206kW (276bhp) and 1,040Nm (767Ibft) of torque which would seem to be a better choice al tonnes would, in SalvesE view, be wastefully °verso fied at 32 tons. Faced with desire to standardise on a sir 32ton 38tonne unit Salve chose the 1625. The comp mow has 15 of them but • number is increasing all the ti as the older 1626s come up replacement.
At the lower end of Christian Salvesen (Transp fleet are the 16 ton rigid n gerated distribution boxvz The decision here is easiel Mercedes-Benz makes only 16 ton four wheel rigid but i range of chassis lengths. '1617 has a turbocharged strai six 5.7 litre engine develop 124kW (168bhp) at 2,800rpm.
Surely this doesn't quite fi with Christian Salvesen's po of not over-specifying. The c, average for 16 tonners is pi ably around 155bhp.
Peter Slocombe admitted • the '1617 was quite a gener 16 tonner by their standards. the advantages of having a 1 wheeler that shared so m common points with the cy vehicles in the fleet outweig the diseconomy of a high sp fication. The 1617 rigids are sometimes used on lc distance work, so a premiun tanner makes sense from point of view.
The third and final mode the Christian Salvesen flee the 1617S tractive unit pulling the 10.2m single axle rigerated trailers at 24 1 gross. Most Of these are on the S contract working out of ierstone.
was partly Christian Salveenthusiasm for a 24 ton tive unit that lead to the -oduction of the 1617 in this m — Mercedes-Benz did not .viously have a 24 tanner in :live unit form, only 6x4 Jlage/tipper chassis.
-hus Christian Salvesen was ed with either running a jer Mercedes-Benz unit — the 9 which is plated for 32 tons or using a 24 tanner from )ther manufacturer. This had )n tried before and Salvesen ri/ wanted to stay with Merles-Benz, he answer came in the 1617S I, which, said Peter Slo-n be, Mercedes-Benz first de by cutting down a tipper issis. It shares the same six nder turbo engine as the 7 rigid and this time the [kW (168bhpi is virtually spot the class average for 24 ton ts. The same Mercedes-Benz ht speed range-change gear( is used on both the rigid and 16175 unit but a crawler ratio dded for the unit.
ooking at the whole Salvesen et of 360 Mercedes-Benz ich covers all the operations re is just one basic cab, two ;ines and two gearboxes, h most other components nmon.
he advantages of this very h degree of rationalisation apparent. One immediately lks of the spare parts — beIse so many parts are corn n to the whole fleet the stock ding is reduced to an abso) minimum, saving space, e and money tied up in 'res.
■ anny Stewart didn't mention aspect first. He pointed to a re human advantage. Drivers the smaller, distribution vehicles don't feel inferior to their
collegues in the trunkers because the cabs are so similar in their appearince and feel. This also means that drivers can change vehicles and jump out of a boxvan into a trunker and feel at home immediately — the controls and their layout are exactly the same.
Mercedes-Benz is renowned for its almost total dedication to naturally aspirated engines. True, the 1617 does have a turbocharged engine but it's the only one in the entire range. The 32 ton + units of almost every other European manufacturer are turbocharged.
Looking at the 1625 with its 14.6 litre engine I asked Peter Slocombe if Christian Salvesen can afford to run naturally-aspirated units in this turbocharged era? "As I see it, you can achieve a given output either by using a relatively small, turbo-charged engine or by using a large naturally-aspirated engine" said Peter. "Certainly, a small turbo is more efficient for its capacity but
the large naturally aspirated engine has the advantage of being relatively under-stressed and should therefore last longer."
The disadvantage of the larger engine is of course its weight. This is a very real penalty when Christian Salvesen is looking for every pound of payload at 32 tons and for this reason Salvesen is experimenting with a set of aluminium trailer wheels.
Fuel economy is of course something else that Christian Salvesen is concerned about and the company has tried various ways of stretching the fuel as far as possible.
Several years ago road speed governors were tried. These proved fairly unreliable and could easily be by-passed by drivers in a hurry.
More recently, the company took advantage of the Mercedes economy driving instruction course. This was held at the Doncaster depot and gave some promising results. Drivers making regular runs to Liverpool from Doncaster in 1626 units loaded both ways were averaging 37.61it/100km (7.5mpg) but after the benefit of the instruction this improved to about 31.311it/100km (9.0mpg).
The other fuel saving device tried is the roof-mounted air deflector. After fitting a deflector to one of the units the consumption improved by 0.2mpg — that's a 2-3 per cent gain. The trouble came when the deflector was taken off again after a couple of months; the consumption stayed at the better level so Peter Slocombe isn't quite sure what to make of the deflector! "The figures are so inconclusive
that we decided not to fit t deflectors. They might work• some people but they did work for us."
The new 1625 units in the fli are proving to be very good fuel even in their unmodifi state. They averal 35.3111t/100km — 33.2Iit/1001 (8.0-8.5mpg) at 32 tons gvw a 38.61 lit/100km — 37.6Iit/1001 (7.3-7.5mpg) at 38 tonnes.
In both rigid and tractive u versions the 1617s are averagi 25.71it/100km (11.0mpg). T1 confirms Christian Salvesel belief in 24 tin artics. They about 3mpg better on fuel ec nomy than the 32 tonners a cost about £7,000 less on t Mercedes-Benz list prices.
Christian Salvesen has al chosen just one semi-trail manufacturer. It is Gray Adams of Fraserburgh and the refrigerated semi-trailers ; from this Scottish bodybuild Running gear is by Rub,E Owen, with Jost landing lei Ratcliff tailifts are fitted to m( of the rigids and 10.2m trail( while trailers without tail-li have Quinton Hazel' Underide,
The majority of the frid units are Petters, on whi Christian Salvesen has stE. dardised in the last couple years. The rest are ThermoKin, A new venture for tl Christian Salvesen group is entry into the chilled distributi business, under the name Sz' resh. This is a logical extensi of the company's temperatu controlled expertise, involvi the retail distribution of produ( at 2 degrees-4 degrees Car grade. These are normally sho shelf life fresh food produi which must be delivered will 24 hours of collection from t supplier.
The first Salfresh depot w opened at Manchester this sui mer, where there are eic vehicles. All are non-hgv M4 cedes-Benz L608D chassis ca with small refrigerated boxy bodies by Gray & Adams a have a gvw of 61/2 tonnes.
The controlled temperatu food market seems likely to of1 considerable potential as the c mend for fresh food grows, the expense of the refrigerat alternative. Several other dist bution companies have enter, this market and it looks though the competition will hotting up. Christian Salves. aims to be among the leadE and plans to have 10-15 Salfre depots throughout the UK with two or three years.
Provided Mercedes-Benz (L Ltd meets the strict demands Danny Stewart there is reason why they should not pl a part in the development.