"We had run 85s before and found them reliable and economical on
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maintenance." Paul Dawson
Deben Transport was established In 1987 by managing director Paul Dawson with two second-hand trucks, one of which he drove himself. It is an understatement to say growth has been dramatic—he now operates a fleet of more than 90 tractors, running at up to 44 tonnes on general haulage and up 80 tonnes on Special Types work.
As well as conventional container haulage, the fleet operates a diverse range of trailers to meet various customers' needs from its depots at Felixstowe and Southampton. These include road tanks to carry gases and chemicals; in addition, the company is qualified to transport explosives. Every vehicle in the fleet is equipped with an in-cab phone for keeping in contact with base, which operates 24 hours a day.
Deben's contract division operates vehicles in Its customers' liveries. Dawson has built a reputation on his commitment to quality and service, to which a major shipping line recently made testament by naming Lisbon Transport as its "National Haulier of the Year" for achieving a service level of 98,6% for more than 7,000 moves undertaken nationwide.
'We have Scanias, Ivecos, Renaults and MANs in the fleet, as well as Dars,' says Dawson. "We had run 85s before and found them reliable and economical on maintenance, although they were not the best on fuel.
"We took the Super Space Cab XF430 in two years ago as a demonstrator, and then decided we would buy it. It was a flagship, you might say. We have bought a further 40 XFs since then with the Space Cab. There is quite a bit of difference in the price, and I think the Space Cab is quite adequate for domestic operation in terms of comfort and space. We do a little bit of Continental work, but our primary business is in the UK. The trucks cover about 85,000 miles a year, and about 60010 of that is laden. The average payload of 16-18 tonnes with a container is less than you might think: they are not necessarily full of heavy industrial equipment. It means that quite often we run at less than 32 tonnes gross.
"The XFs are returning an average of 8.5mpg, which is slightly less than the average across the whole of the fleet, but we expect this to improve as they get a little older, as some of the XFs are still quite new. They are already proving to be better than the old 85s with the 11.6-litre engine.
"We will be keeping them for four or five years, depending on the state of the market and what deals we can do. We bath buy and lease our vehicles, but we include contract maintenance on all of them. Primarily we trade them back in, but we also sell one or two privately to ownerdrivers we know. Chassis Cab, our local dealer near Ipswich, gives us good service.
"One of the things we have found with the Daft is we don't have much downtime with them. We have had no major problems. They are certainly as reliable as the B5s, but the telling time will be when they reach three or four years of age."