I am indebted to Mike O'Neill Eaton's PR man who kindly keeps me up to date with all sorts of news Stateside including the fact that Coca-Cola Enterprises has just announced it's buying 185 beverage tractors from Kenworth with Eaton Hybrid Power, making them the largest hybrid truck fleet in
Meanwhile, what strikes me as doubly interesting about this story is the fact that we've yet to really embrace hybrid tractors over in Europe---urban distribution trucks yes (as witnessed by the latest DAF LF and Mitsubishi Canter hybrid trials) but tractors no. Infact the first sign of a serious hybrid tractor was at last year's Hanover show when Mercedes showed it's hybrid Axor--pictured above, and for which there has yet to be a customer. So score one-nil to the Yanks who are knocking out hybrids in far greater numbers to real-life truck operators.
Anyroadup for the facts on the new hybrid tractors and Coca Cola's hybrid plans click thriough here...
Coca-Cola Enterprises already has 142 hybrid electric delivery vehicles on the road, the majority of which are 12-bay box trucks (33,000lb gross vehicle weight). This makes CCE the largest heavy duty fleet in
I think ir's worth pointing out that, over here in the US, those Kenworth tractors are the equivalent of Canter and Daf LF urban distribution trucks. I'm not kidding, a tractor as wee as them wouldn't be seen anywhere except double-parked on streets while crates of the good stuff are trollied into the store. Usually, though, that trailers are just single-axle 30ft jobs rather than the one shown in the pic.
Now, urban fuel-trucks are a different beast altogether - Big 8-legger bonneted jobs with 4-axle drawbar trailers. Mighty things altogether,
What happened to the Space Max???
It looked such a great idea.
Was the C.O.G too high or something?