Yearsley adding 26 trucks and 50 trailers to cope with demand

Heywood, Lancashire logistics firm Yearsley Group has begun taking delivery of the first of 26 new trucks and 50 new trailers being added to the fleet to cope with additional business.

The trucks, all 6x2 Euro-5 Mercedes-Benz Actros tractors, will be running at 44 tonnes GVW and will be based around Yearsley’s 13-site network as well as a dedicated NDC it manages for one customer.

The trailers are all refrigerated boxes being sourced from Schmitz Cargobull, Krone and Chereau. All will be delivered by early November.

A spokeswoman for the firm told Motortransport.co.uk the multi-million pound investment in new vehicles was “based on increased requirements and new customer wins”.

Euro-5 trucks rather than Euro-6 had been chosen because of the former’s known fuel economy and whole life costs, including residual values, she added.

The Actros units were chosen over other makes and models for a variety of reasons including their specification, low maintenance costs, and high residual values, she said, as well as their success in extensive recent fuel consumption trials.

While the firm is a longstanding customer of Schmitz Cargobull and Krone, it chose to add Chereau to its list of trailer suppliers in order to test the insulation properties of its latest products, she added.

Yearsley, which runs 24/7 and double shifts its vehicles, anticipates the new trucks will run 180,000-200,000 miles a year.

In August the operator opened a new northern 'superhub'.