My theory is rather different and much simpler. The capital cost of a coach is very high. So a replacement component such as a new engine is small in comparison to its value.
For a car, the cost of many replacement components is high in comparison to the value of the vehicle.
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>cost of many replacement components is high in comparison to the value of the vehicle ..
.. which becomes low quite quickly, not least because owners want something more trendy, which is happily provided by the makers to keep the factory going. Until fairly recently there has been a segment of society eager to buy the cast-offs, which retained some value. Now there are more cars than people (almost) so tired old cars are worthless (also tired old people ..).
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Yes Humph is correct, all lorries must undergo 6 weekly safety inspections, and will have defects rectified as soon as they appear to prevent them getting worse (well all reputable hauliers will). We have had a truck that have covered two million miles plus, and many more easily covering one million.
The 2million vehicle was a 1994 'M' Daf 75-300 which was run at 34000kg's gvw. It ran 52 weeks of the year on a double shift, going to Yorkshire at 3am and then running to London at 6pm with a different driver and trailer. Just on these runs daily it covered about 650miles, weekly 3250, annually, 169000. It also did weekend work when required (and not off the road for servicing) which added more to the weekly total. We had the vehicle for 10 years from 3 years old (1997 - 2007). It had 400,000km's (250,000miles) when purchased and when retired and sold on for export it had covered just over the magic 2million miles. It was a little tired by then but still ran well. In that time pretty much everything had been replaced, and we only kept it for so long as it was so reliable. The distance covered meant it hardly ever cooled down. Coincidently the sister vehicle to it was awful, not used nearly as much and off the road far too much with overheating and pressurising problems so we got rid of that well before this one.
Reliability of trucks is different nowadays as they have too many electronics in my opinion and while the mechanicals are good the electrics can cause problems. While we were running the big miler we had a brand new Iveco Stralis on test as a view to replacing it, it broke down three times in two weeks so it went back and we stuck with the old truck.
New trucks are more comfortable, car like comfort and a tendency to bigger space cabs which our drivers love. Yes they are costly, but can earn a lot of income over time, and have to be made to stringent safety standards which can only be a good thing.
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>>all lorries must undergo 6 weekly safety inspections
That's not quite true. All trucks must undergo regular inspections - the frequency of the inspections is agreed between the operator and VOSA as part of the terms of the operator obtaining his operator's licence.
For example, from my father's fleet, the Mercedes tractor unit which was used on long distance container duty had inspections at 8 week intervals, while most of the rest of the fleet was used for deliveries to building sites were on a 4 weekly inspection cycle.
As my father had built a large garage including a ramp for HGV cleaning and inspection work, we also carried out inspections on a contract basis for a number of local owner drivers, which is how we came to realise that Iveco are the truck of last resort!
Owing to the eye watering costs involved, parts for trucks are usually overhauled more frequently than replaced.
For example, on almost a rolling basis we were sending leaking brake actuators to be rebuilt for the AECs and Leylands (these very rarely gave trouble on the Mercs).
We would also strip down leaf springs to replace only the broken leaf (again, another job of monotonous regularity on Leylands and AECs, and a rarity on the Mercs). Brake shoes would be re-lined rather than having new shoes fitted. New universal joints would be fitted to prop shaft joints rather than fitting new shafts.
Even after quite catastrophic engine failures, where a short engine would be fitted in a car, the truck engine would be overhauled in-situ, with the crank being lowered from beneath, and the wet cylinder liners being pulled out of the top of the block.
I can't remember the mileages, but, when the fleet was sold in 1990, we did still have a 1979 Leyland 6 wheeler which had been in continuous use, delivering bricks to building sites. It was as simple as such a truck could be, with an L12 naturally aspirated engine (a development of an AEC engine), a 6 speed crash gearbox, and the only electronics were in the tachograph, the radio, and the regulator for the alternator!
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I think it's also about use isn't it?
Ordinary type cars used as taxis seem to go on for very high mileages because they're used so much.
An acquaintance who maintained taxis years ago said that their engines rarely stopped running except for service and to re-fuel. Owners would have a couple of "jockey" drivers as well as themselves so the cars were infrequently subject to warming up and cooling down.
If you think of a much more expensive commercial in those terms, it's got to be on the road and running to earn back its original cost. So high mileage is an inevitability, I guess.
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I dont think 2 million miles is uncommon, 200,000 miles a year for 10 years.
Aircraft are comparable, a few years ago there was a TV feature on a BA747-200 delivered in around 1975 and retired in around 2001 at 27 ish years old during which time it had spent IIRC 14 years in the air and had covered around 50 million miles.
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Aircrafts are comparable
Probably not - they are entirely different creatures. They don't move on ground ;)
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>>the truck of last resort
It Vibrates, Everything Comes Off
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Triggers broom in Only Fools and Horses had a broom for something like 15 years.
Had three new heads and two new handles!
I suspect many service vehicles are the same!
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Just to add to the Jumbo stuff above, most aircraft fly for about 30 years or so - some even longer - unless you fly with someone like Emirates or Singapore who tend to renew their fleets much more than others.
At the end of the day though planes are just big aluminium tubes (or plastic/carbon fibre with the 787). The engines are the clever bit and once at altitude they just tick over really - operating at about 10% of max thrust. They also have allot of life limited parts but some will do 20K+ hours on wing with no bother.
On the subject of HGV's etc I think into the millions of miles in not unreasonable. Allot of cars will do 400-500K (Volvos, Subarus & Hondas would eat this mileage) but they are not generally viewed as work horses and become uneconomical to repair.
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That's why most coaches do no have age-related number plates.There are many long distance coaches on the road 20+ hours out of 24.
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Yes 1 million miles isn't a great deal, typically after 750 K it does get expensive but hey the truck is well paid for by then.
The Highest mileage I know is a Parcel Truck with City Link that does the following route 5 days a week. Inverness - Glasgow - Birmingham - Glasgow - Inverness something like 4800 miles per week as it runs with a double deck trailer it doing about 6.5-7 mpg !!
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>>all lorries must undergo 6 weekly safety inspections That's not quite true. All trucks must undergo regular inspections - the frequency of the inspections is agreed between the operator and VOSA as part of the terms of the operator obtaining his operator's licence.
I bet he would not get that now!!! The safety inspections are 6 weeks, almost set in stone by the traffic commissioners, you have to do an awful lot of work to get them reduced, and to be honest the amount of extra work involved to get them reduced is not worth it. Whilst it might not be legislation that everyone has 6 weekly intervals it is most certainly an unwritten rule.
As for mileages, one company I worked for ran their trucks 24hrs a day, 6 days a week, with normally 3 drivers per shift (3x8hr), these would run up to 3/4 of a million k's in about 2 years, always very reliable (and there were 3 different makes represented in the fleet of over 70 vehicles). But they were very well looked after by an on site garage, even the slightest of problems we could defect and get a different unit whilst the defected one was looked at and repaired. I was there for 3 years and only broke down once in that time!!
But another reason for the reliabilty was that the drivers had time to do their daily inspections on tyres and oil and water etc, we did this at the beginning of each shift when we fuelled up. So they never ran low on oil or water, and the engines never really got cold.
Another company I worked for was very different, Most of the drivers did not even know where the dipstick for the oil was!! They did a smaller mileage but were stop start tyoe driving, up to 90 stops a day, which palyed havac with batteries and starter motors, not to mention the drivers doors and drivers door glass!!!!
The type of work a vehicle is on plays a huge part in their live expectancy!
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Thread Drift! There was a man mentioned in Autocar years ago who did a 600 mile a day round trip, 5 days a week collecting/dropping off computer info on dics or drives. Some sort of Mazda sallon or hatch ISTR - he had it in a for a 10K servicing every 3 weeks!
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Because of the strange way I make a living, 2000 miles a week is not uncommon from mid February to mid April and again from mid July to mid October. The rest of the time the cars rarely move other than local domestic duties. Neither scenario seems to bother them much. Only golden rule is that if servicing or other work is due it gets done on time. However, they are not trucks or buses so I'll be off now......
;-)
Edit- That is they rarely move except for a couple of blasts down to the Med in the Summer, but we don't really count those.......
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 25/10/2008 at 12:55
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>>almost set in stone by the traffic commissioners
I can well imagine that the common sense aspect of determining these intervals has been driven out of the system.
In a practical sense, we were finding plenty of faults with the on-site trucks at 4 week inspection intervals, and very few faults on the (single driver/shift) long distance tractor unit, and if anything we should have been inspecting the on-site vehicles more frequently, and the long distance truck even less frequently.
Another aspect to this, which is more difficult to prevent evidence for, is the action of the driver. We had one particular driver who was heavy on the brakes to the point of stupidity - we were sometimes adjusting the brakes up more than once a week on his truck!
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