If you met a bloke in the pub who told you he was a Mercedes-Benz test driver, who makes a living out of testing vehicles to destruction, you'd probably be jealous. I certainly would anyway! For me it conjures up images of wheel-spinning SL55 AMG's though the Arizona desert. But in actual fact the truth is very different - at least it is if you're based at the new truck proving ground in Worth, Germany.
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The 1900sq m site, which took three years to build at a cost of €80m, has 14 different types of road surface. This allows its team of 35 dedicated truck test drivers to experience trunk roads, motorways, pot-holed road surfaces, building sites and desert-like washboard surfaces within a matter of minutes. There are even tracks that replicate the conditions in specific countries - like South Korea, India and Brazil. And before you ask, no, the Brazilian didn't have a neatly trimmed strip of vegetation running down the centre!
The trucks are driven on continuous cycles at a steady 60kmph. Every 7,000kms in these arduous conditions is the equivalent of 1.2 mill kms on regular roads. This way Mercedes is able to condense a truck's life to just 6 months. At this point they are completely dismantled, and every single component is scrutinized.
The gruelling conditions take their toll on the drivers, who work one-hour on, one-hour off, in order to recover from the punishing ride. In fact, if they are driving an Atego or Mitsubishi Fuso, they get two hours of coffee drinking time for every hour of work.
Apparently the most difficult part about building this impressive site was actually finding a German road-building companies that was able to make a bad road surface. Perhaps they should have called a few UK companies!
Sir,
Have Murky-Hades gone completely, barking teu-gin-and-tonically doolally? 80 really big ones and three entire brewing seasons blown on building a "bad" road (which based on the Global Roads Richter Scale in any case looks fair to middling to me)! Why oh why will they not call us? We've got hundreds of 'em like it available here, that cost a pre-decimal 8 quid and took a week to make. For a box of pies and a case of appropriately chilled loud mouth soup, they could have come here, otherwise for free, and played day and night. All to their little hearts content, in real life away from the simulator!! And we could with ease throw in, gratis, a life-times wear and tear within a fortnight to boot, so bang-bang, job done and in the can, back home in time for the Buns-league footy replays, a stein of large-her (or a large stein of her) and a brisk rub-down with the Sportingzhe Zeitung.
It's enough to make you call your MP. I am so cross I could throw the phone down.
Yours in abject disgust
they could have saved a fortune and just come here for their testing, most of our roads are probably bad enough to test the trucks suficiently!
they could have saved a fortune and just come here for their testing, most of our roads are probably bad enough to test the trucks suficiently!
If that is a truck proving ground, how come it hasnt got any hills or dirt road sections? As JB says, they might be better of loaning the lorries to him for a fortnight.