BUILDING A BETTER BODY
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The recession has sent some bodybuilders to the wall. But hard times have made surviving builders cost-effective at a time when their customers are demanding top quality products.
• Box and Luton van bodywork remains a ruthlessly competitive market. It was the same in the late seventies, when take-it-or-leave-it specifications, tailored to high production volumes, were the norm. Nevertheless the shake-out effect of the recession has been to alter body selection criteria quite fundamentally.
No longer is initial cost the first consideration in arriving at a body specification or deciding on the best chassis to go beneath it.
In the words of Don Wilson, chairman of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Trader's bodybuilding committee and managing director of Besco Bodies, buyers have become more "professional". They are less obsessed with price for its own sake, he says, than with specification and all that implies by way of rugged design and structured durability figuring more prominently in the bodywork selection process.
Whole-life costing is being applied ever more widely by buyers of middleweight chassis and the bodies that are usually ordered at the same time. Durability is being taken into account in determining optimum body design; in particular, operators are giving thought to the relative life expectations of bodies and chassis.
Unfortunately a more durable chassis tends also to be a heavier one. And every kilogram of additional tare weight implies a loss of payload, though it must be said that over 50% of 7.5 tonne chassis and around 20% of 16-tonners are never loaded to their full plated weights.
What of the matching bodywork to suit those potentially longer-lived chassis? Bodybuilders we have spoken to report a variety of contrasting policies. Some operators working on tight budgets — typically where the company accountant has accepted the whole-life fleet costing philosophy with some reluctance — are, it seems, tending to skimp on body specification. The chassis might be costing 2,000 over the price of its more cheap and cheerful predecessor. As a result at least some of that premium has to be saved elsewhere to minimise the net increase in outlay, if only as a token gesture.
Barry Pusey, managing director of Silverspeed Commercials, points out that the introduction of the 7.5 tonne Mercedes 814 chassis on the UK market has served to highlight the payloadversus-quality dilemma. Chassis-cab weight of the 814 is, for some payloadconscious operators, frighteningly high, reckons Pusey, at about 450kg higher than an equivalent Leyland Roadrunner, for example.
A few years ago the Mercedes would have been totally unacceptable to fleet buyers in Britain on the grounds of allegedly-inadequate payload capacity. Today, however, the prospect of longer and more trouble-free chassis working life is perceived by many as an acceptable compensation for loss of payload. Nevertheless 814 buyers are in practice seeking to minimise that implied productivity penalty by reducing body weight.
"Our sales people have had several heated discussions with customers on this very point," says Pusey. "On a 6.1m (20ft) aluminium body for the 814, for instance, they have asked us to put the sideposts further apart and to use aluminium instead of steel for the rear end frame, even when a tail-lift is going to be fitted. But we resist such requests, pointing out that the quality of the body ought to match that of the Mercedes chassis. And after all, skimping on body strength just to get weight down would put Silverspeed's reputation in jeopardy."
John Muschamp, managing director of Coachwork Conversions, says the number of buyers for whom payload is the be-all-and-end-all consideration is now strictly limited on van-bodied vehicles of 7.5 tonnes GVW and above. By the same token he says that acute price sensitivity has also largely disappeared, at least among users who demand a precise specification to meet requirements.
During the early part of the recession van operators — many of them facing their own liquidity problems — were says Muschamp, looking for bodies that were simply cheap. It did not matter too much if dimensions and door configurations differed somewhat from the ideal. Today the purchasing philosophy of companies who have survived the commercial ravages of the early 1980s — and are almost by definition more financially astute — has changed completely.
Those national companies which run fleets of several hundred vans now tend to employ purchasing staff who are far more technically qualified than their predecessors. Muschamp says they tend to be not only concerned with design quality but with quality assurance throughout the production of a big order.
This theme of quality control figures prominently in the code of practice being established by the SMMT's 20-strong bodybuilding committee with its sixmember working party under Don Wilson's chairmanship. As Wilson is keen to stress the code of practice, based on the engineering quality tenets of British Standard BS5750, is aimed at providing fleet operators — bodybuilders' customers — with an all-embracing guarantee of manufacturing standards.
Bodybuilders who adopt the code will have to give a 12 months clearly-defined warranty whose terms are laid down by the SMMT. The code will also cover the quality of raw materials and fittings used in body construction. Outside suppliers of such equipment and material will be vetted. And the SMMT, as an independent body (no pun intended!), will arbitrate in any quality or warranty dispute between bodybuilder and user.
It is expected that at least 40 of the country's largest bodybuilding companies will join the scheme, agreeing to the terms of the code of practice and entitled to mark their products and carry accreditation in their advertising and publicity. Those 40 companies produce between 74 and 80% of commercial vehicle bodywork in the UK, estimates Wilson.
The SMMT's impending code of practice would seem to offer most to smaller vehicle users — in particular to own-account concerns for whom the vehicle fleet is a necessary evil, and whose operations should, they feel, take up as little management time as possible.
Barrie Pusey, on Silverspeed's behalf, is nevertheless quick to defend the smaller bodybuilder, whose customers get their quality assurance less tangibly via an often long-established personal relationship, along with more flexible production facilities which can respond quickly to accommodate specials. "In a nutshell," says Pusey, "it is easier for a big flowline bodybuilder to get things wrong."
Because the middleweight truck buyers who take the bulk of bodybuilders' output are now less obsessed with initial cost and, in most cases, absolute payload, a number of clear design trends have emerged. The most obvious perhaps, in the case of dry freight van bodywork, is the move away from fabricated (usually riveted and/or huck-bolted) aluminium construction to the much simpler plywood box.
Glass fibre laminate, resin bonded to both faces of the ply panels, gives them bending strength and impact resistance and at the same time seals them against the weather. Few bodybuilders or operators now question the superior durability of a GRP plywood body compared with its aluminium equivalent. However there remains among older bodybuilding craftsmen a measure of regret that sidewalls and front bulkheads pre-cut from sheets of GRP-faced plywood (with or without a layer of foam insulation) have drastically de-skilled the bodybuilding trade.
On the negative side, from the operator's point of view, laminate-wall bodies are both heavier and, despite the reduced labour content, costlier than corresponding aluminium structures. In the case of a simple boxvan bodyweight can be 50% higher with GRP-plywood construction, reckons Wilson, Muschamp warns that weight comparisons between the two forms of construction can sometimes be thrown into disarray for some applications. For example the habit continues of lining the interiors of metal fabricated bodies for hanging garment distribution. The thin p13 panels can easily make the body as heavy — though probably not as expensive — as a body with thicker GRP-faced plywood throughout.
On the other hand traditional metal construction using vertical pressed or extruded posts and horizontal stringers needs no additional load-securing tie-rails, while a smooth-walled GRP body is poorly equipped from a load retention angle. Load-lock anchorages and/or tie rails must be added, making the GRP body even heavier and more costly.
As to price, the premium varies currently between about 12 and 17% if you opt for the tougher, simpler and arguably more easily-repairable option. Wildly fluctuating raw material prices of oil (from which the GRP resin is derived) and aluminium, have influenced the relative competitiveness of the two very different forms of van body construction. But despite big rises in aluminium costs over the last year or two and the latest fall in oil prices, GRP-faced body panelling remains relatively expensive.
Nevertheless the drift away from metal body construction continues, further illustrating the vehicle buyer's shifting priorities, signalling a growing awareness that transport operators on the Continent might, after all, not have been that foolish over the years in specifying elaborate and hence costly and heavy bodywork. D Alan Bunting