Featherstone, West Yorkshire-based vehicle operator Brian Yeardley Continental has said it is “very disappointed” that new Euro-6 trucks cannot be delivered by some vehicle suppliers in the UK yet.
MD Kevin Hopper told Motortransport.co.uk the firm wanted to trial Euro-6 tractors from Iveco, Scania and Volvo from May or June this year, before placing an order in September for new trucks to replace 12 older Volvo models in early 2014.
But only Volvo was in a position to provide a Euro-6 truck of the required specification before late 2013, and given its lead times, even this would not have been available until July or August.
“We are obviously very disappointed as we hoped, after all the hype surrounding Euro-6 in 2012, that we would have been in a position to order the new Euro-6 engines in the new model trucks early this year," said Hopper, "but it seems the truck manufacturers supplying the UK market were more bothered about talking about Euro-6 than having them available to sell in 2013.”
“I’m told by everyone other than Volvo, that Euro-6 will result in poorer fuel consumption, but we will not know until we have a truck to test.”
The firm has instead opted to trial Euro-5 or EEV models from the three manufacturers, which it will compare over a maximum of three months, depending on exact delivery dates, to seven new Euro-5 Daf XF105s brought into operation during 2012. All will be used on international work at 40 tonnes GVW. The company will monitor both the fuel consumption and reliability of the four marques and will ultimately choose just one of them for all the new trucks, said Hopper.
The 9.5mpg already averaged on long-haul work by the seven Dafs will be “hard to beat”, he added.
A spokesman for Volvo confirmed new models of Euro-6 vehicles would not be delivered in the UK until mid to late July, and stressed that most operators were still after Euro-5 models. A spokesman for Iveco told us that right-hand-drive order entry would not begin until June with typical lead times of three months.
A spokesman for Scania said that although some of its Euro-6 engines had been available for some time, others would not be available for delivery until the end of the year.
