THE DEFINITIVE TRUCKING SITE

February 2010

Emergency vehicles are far more flexible and useful when equipped with demountable body systems.

Service delivery – or the lack of it – has sparked violent riots in recent times. What most people don’t take into account is that effective service delivery depends on truck wheels that turn on the road with reliability and productivity. This means that a truck must have a high level of availability and must be perceived to be capable of ‘rapid response’. So how do municipalities get wheels that work? The Ethekwini (Durban) example holds a few key answers as FleetWatch technical correspondent Dave Scott discovered when he attended the second Ethekwini Truck Applications show held towards the end of last year. It was a demonstration of how to put service-delivery into practice.

In big bold letters printed on the municipal rates statements sent out by the City of Tshwane (Pretoria), stand the words: ‘Sustainable service delivery depends on you paying your account’. It may be added that money does not deliver – only money converted into effective and efficient wheels delivers.

Across South Africa, public servants at Government and municipal levels have been criticised for the lack of service delivery – with violent riots accompanying the criticism in many areas. Even when they have the money, there’s a failure to make it happen.

For each municipality’s Integrated Development Plan, reliable vehicles are an absolute necessity to achieve high standards of service-delivery. Says Brian Stokes, Deputy Head: City Fleet, Ethekwini Municipality: “This applies equally to servicedelivery in respect of infrastructural development such as roads, water and sanitation provision as well as social services issues such as policing and health.”

It’s South Africa’s biggest municipal applications show – 53 units on show.

Driving this specialised show are, from right to left: Craig Uren, Isuzu Truck SA Chief Operating Officer; Brian Stokes, Deputy Head, City Fleet, Ethekwini Municipality; Malcolm Joshua, Head: City Fleet, Ethekwini Municipality; and Masatoshi Kobayashi, Isuzu Truck SA, CEO.

Dual-purpose trucking improves utilisation

Municipal fleet operations are contained within municipal boundaries where the focus is on service delivery and not on distance covered as a work measurement. The productivity challenge is how to get more work out of one truck in the available time with less fleet. And it’s all based on the work a truck does within available operating hours. The good news is that this can be accelerated when trucks are equipped with dual-purpose cargo bodies and hydraulic material handling equipment.

The second Ethekwini Truck Applications show was a demonstration of how to put service-delivery into practice with the show considerably enlarged over the first successful event held 18 months earlier. This time round, the Isuzu Truck-sponsored show had over 53 units on display with specialised truck-body and material handling equipment applications – the theme being how much work a truck can do with cargo body and equipment designed to suit tasks that in many cases offer a dualpurpose capability.

How does dual-purpose capability improve municipal service-delivery? Stokes states that “it is obviously important from a costs perspective that trucks are properly utilised”. He goes on to explain by way of an example that a very successful application is where a tanker body has been incorporated below a standard drop-side body.

“In our Parks operation which uses 4-ton trucks, during summer the trucks are used for normal work but during the dry months, new plants etc. can be watered. In an 8-ton operation, the trucks take out construction materials loads on pallets to rural areas where work is taking place and using a truck-mounted hydraulic crane the truck is immediately off-loaded. After off-loading, this dual-purpose application is used for the delivery of water to rural communities or to areas where pipes have burst.”

The Ethekwini approach has been to design multi-purpose truck bodies to satisfy a variety of municipal service needs. Stokes comments: “The use of hook-lift body systems also improves utilisation. A good example is in the Fire and Emergency Services operation, where various functions can be catered for by using one chassis cab together with the fully equipped appropriate body to suit a particular emergency.”

The big lesson here is not to tie capital investment down to a single application. Successful vehicle application and utilisation starts at the rear of a truck. Start with a ‘payloads & tasks’ matrix.

Measuring utilisation

Accepted fleet efficiency measurement tools are time utilisation ratios: Used time ÷ Available time – expressed as a percentage. This also needs an hour-meter as standard equipment in municipal fleets. Hour-meters are not only useful for measuring productivity but essential for servicing.

A sound benchmark for the time that an engine has idled and worked is 250 hours, irrespective of any low distance wheels may have covered. This means management by measuring work effort and not expenses. It’s the right way to manage a truck fleet.

Employee safety is not negotiable

Reliable wheels that transport municipal workers in safety are integral to service-delivery. The 13th Amendment to the National Road Traffic Act published in Government Gazette 29865 – 4 May 2007 – carried changes to Regulation 247. There’s no restriction on the number of persons that may be carried on the back of a goods vehicle but now it must be empty of tools or goods – with the exception of personal effects – unless they are separated by a partition. Here Ethekwini Municipality has been uncompromising and for some time now, has specified the addition of steel crew-cabs for crews that accompany trucks to work sites.

On display were Isuzu’s all-new N-Series medium range trucks that completely satisfy Regulation requirements with added passenger safety value. There are two crew-cab models in the new Isuzu N-Series range offering 6-seater and wide cab 7-seater capacity respectively, both including the driver. Each seat is equipped with a seat-belt.

Of interest to readers is that the new Isuzu F-Series range to be launched during the first quarter of 2010, includes one crew cab model – the Isuzu FSR 800 which is a 13 500kg gross vehicle mass (GVM) truck that offers fully-homologated seating for a driver and 6 passengers. This will be a first for heavy trucks in South Africa.

Durable body equipment is essential

Stokes points to the key issue of matching trucks to durable bodies. “Ensure the most suitable steel plate is used for the construction of the body,” he says.

In coastal climates where corrosion is a major problem, the use of Corten steel over mild steel will more than double the life of the body although only costing some 18% more. Ethekwini still has Corten bodies operating economically after 30 years whereas mild steel bodies can require replacement or major repair after 7 – 10 years. Here are some points to think of:

• Consider specifying 3CR12 steel for tanker bodies to prevent corrosion developing.

• Consider the aspect of net legal payload and how this can be increased by the use of lighter materials such as aluminium and Domex steel etc. In one of the Ethekwini examples, the use of a lighter material resulted in a 25% increase in legal payload and the payback period to cover the increased cost of the material was 18 months.

• Ensure that a flexible mounting system is used in mounting a tank body onto the truck chassis to prevent either cracked bodies or chassis developing.

Section 32 of the Supply Chain Regulations states that an organ of state, a municipality, can utilise a contract of another organ of state to procure goods providing certain conditions are met, of which the most important are that original prices remain the same and that the supplier agrees to extend the contract.

Taken from the article headed ‘B’ for Budget starts with ‘A’ for Application published in the February 2008 edition of FleetWatch, the following is worth repeating: