According to David Rose, the retailer’s General Manager for Home Delivery, “Our preferred bodybuilder Bevan Group has been able to produce lighter bodies than we’d expected compared to our old bodies. And the new Bevan21 streamlined and curved roof design, as well as improving fuel-efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint, looks really modern and stylish. Furthermore, because we operate a demount system, our payload is improved irrespective of what type of vehicle we use with them.
“However, when they are coupled with the Isuzu chassis the payload benefit is considerably magnified. Our planned routes typically entail 33 deliveries per day – the extra carrying capacity freed up by this new combination should allow our drivers to make an extra four or five ‘drops’ per journey, which represents a very useful increase in productivity.”
When mounted on the Isuzu N75.190 7.5-tonne chassis they are used exclusively to make deliveries to the homes of Argos and Homebase customers. Aerodynamic enhancements will always deliver the biggest improvements in mpg performance if the vehicle is allocated to long, steady journeys.
But as David Rose confirms: “Despite the fact that ours is a multi-drop operation, the Bevan21 body on the Isuzu is achieving average fuel cost savings of around 4.5 per cent compared to some of the older trucks within our fleet, which is certainly beyond our expectations.”
For this latest order, the bodybuilder’s designers worked closely with the Argos team to ‘engineer out’ as much weight as possible from the bodies. A new base frame, ultra-light panels, plastic tie rails, and even pre-coloured, powder-coated extrusions and fixings – negating the need for coats of paint – were all used to trim around 200kg off what were already fairly lightweight units.
Further information about Isuzu Truck UK can be viewed on the company's website at http://www.isuzutruck.co.uk/
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