Warren Aitken takes us behind the wheel of Daimler Trucks Australia Pacific’s new Mercedes-Benz tip truck model for an entertaining spin around the block.
Have you ever been to Hungry Jacks and tried to order a Big Mac? Or vice versa, have you rocked up to Maccas and ordered yourself a Whopper meal? Obviously, their immediate response will be to yell at you that you can’t walk through the drive-through and to put that bottle away.
But with the right exchange of time and finances, you can construct as close to what you want as possible. Sit with me on this for a minute, I have a point. The fact is they both have all the ingredients needed to make whatever you like – in the end it comes down to the price and how long you are prepared to wait. I know that sounds obscure and irrelevant, but the truth is, it is the best way to describe the reason I was invited out to one of Australia’s leading mulching and garden cultivation companies to test drive a Mercedes-Benz tipper.
The tip truck market in Australia is huge – for years it has been dominated by bonneted American trucks or converted trade-ins, but lately the emergence of the European cabovers, factory fitted with safety features and fuel saving technology, has seen the balance of power sway a little.
Daimler Trucks Australia Pacific and its flagship Mercedes-Benz Actros has been slowly growing its presence in the tipper market. The drawback has always been, for Mercedes fans at least, they were metaphorically heading to Maccas and ordering a Whopper. In other words, they were having to buy a Mercedes-Benz platform sitting on the floor and convert it into a tipper. That involved spending plenty of extra coin converting a long wheelbase tractor unit up to mount a body and re-configuring all the European wiring and electricals. Then you had to work with body builders to relay and rehouse hydraulics, electrics and all that fancy stuff that makes the tipper body work. It was never a drama; plenty have done it and been rewarded for their choices, but it was extra time and money.
Well now, Mercedes-Benz has changed the drive-through route – you can order your Big Mac directly from Maccas, your Whopper straight from Jack. In other words, factory spec’d PBS compliant Mercedes-Benz’s are now on the menu, and I was invited to Yatala, Queensland to get sunburnt, to get educated in all things horticultural and to see for myself how good the kitset Mercedes-Benz tippers really are.
I won’t spend a lot of time talking about the performance of the Mercedes product. The fact is, nothing has changed with them. The German designed truck is as comfortable as any high-end lounge suit.
In its 13L 530hp engine, it packs as much punch as Oleksandr Usyk during training camps and, when it comes to safety and technology, it rivals anything the Star Trek writers could come up with. The kitset tippers that Mercedes-Benz are factory packing for its Australian customers come with all the bells and whistles you would expect from the German giants, and that is the point.
What I want to focus on is how and why they have put this package together and how and why it will be a huge money saver for the Australian market. I keep mentioning ‘Australian Market’, ‘Australian Customers’ and emphasising the ‘Australian’ side of this deal, and the reason for that is simple. This new kitset tipper set up is designed specifically for the Australian market.
We are a different breed over here with different requirements, different conditions and different expectations. Mercedes-Benz already has a heavy duty, construction industry spec’d truck and that is the ever-popular Aroc range. With the same cab options as an Actros and similar engine specs, it comes with everything needed to get down and dirty. However, the Aroc has always been seen and predominantly used as a hard-core off-road rig, not so much a high payload, on highway, high productivity based truck and dog option.
In the past, if you were a fan of the three-pointed star and wanted a tip truck, the Daimler Trucks Australia Pacific team would be building a truck and dog out of the Actros model available to them. You would get a longer wheelbase tractor unit and do a boat load of work to get it ready to put a body on it. That in itself came with a time penalty and extra costs. There are a fair few modifications and alterations needed to fit the Australian PBS standards for three and four axle dog trailer set ups. Daimler Trucks Australia Pacific wanted a way to make it more cost effective, speed up the whole process and have a more competitive truck and dog market option.
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My host for the test drive, sales consultant Brendon Palmer, was part of the team tasked with seeing what could be done over in Wörth am Rhein, which is where Mercedes-Benz’s manufacturing plant is located, to suit the PBS three-axle and four-axle dog combination. They started with using the Actros bones, as in the 13L, 530hp engine which they knew was doing the job, as well as the 12-speed Benz gearbox which was also perfectly placed in the already running truck and dog combinations. They then took the Benz bones and slipped them inside a Mercedes Aroc façade. That façade included the likes of a straight front axle and higher ground clearance, a heavier duty shock absorber package and a much more off-road suited air intake system. The Aroc façade also included an already squared off after frame and a slightly set back front axle compared to the Actros, all necessary for the perfect truck and dog tipper platform.
In the factory, they were able to alter the Aroc wheelbase and limit the tare weight with a smaller AdBlue tank – in the case of our test truck, it had just the single 390L fuel tank. Daimler worked very closely with people smart enough to decipher the PBS requirements to design a set up that meets all the requirements straight out of the box.
From the factory, the trucks come with air and electrics to the rear, as well as ABS. PTO already there to plug and play, beacon switches are pre-wired and everything is set up and ready to ship off to your body builder so they can just drop the bins on, no hacking or splicing into anything required.
“We wanted something we could get straight out of the factory, that would be the right weight, that body builders could just mount and go,” Brendon says.
Now that I have explained the motivation behind the test truck I was handed the keys to, it is only fair that I get the chance to share my opinion on the truck and dog combo as well. Keep in mind that it’s been a good decade since I was out and about as a mud carter. You can forgive me for not turning it inside out on my first go, or second. The Mercedes-Benz was a lot more manoeuvrable than the old, bonneted tipper I had back in the 2010s. Backing up in general was a breeze with this truck, even turning in the tight confines of the yard was extremely impressive.
What I learned from the experience was that the Mercedes Aroc has fantastic mirrors. On highway you do have to take your time double checking as you come into roundabouts – the downside to large mirrors is a bigger blind spot. But you are able to keep track of traffic around you very easily, so that’s the positive side. When you are on site and turning it inside out, you can also see exactly what you are doing wrong, they just won’t improve your skills enough to fix it until the third go.
I was also lucky to be tipping off in a very soft sanded area, which meant my multiple attempts to turn it inside out created a bit of a hazard. Getting me stuck gave me an opportunity to see how good the Aroc was at getting unstuck. I think even the salesman and yardy were a bit doubtful, but I must admit, the Aroc did a fantastic job of getting itself out of a very soft hole. That did impress me.
On the road, heading between sites, the Mercedes is exactly like you would expect from a luxury automotive manufacturer. Having the comfort and quietness of a highway chariot just makes the job so much easier. The Benz box handles the loads and the hills, as well as the stop-start traffic with ease and takes a lot of the stress off the driver. The state-of-the-art controls and display may need a NASA engineer to explain – I was trying to change the speedo to a display I could understand and failed – but that sort of thing would be easily explained during a handover or with multiple attempts while waiting to load.
The test drive unit was designed to show exactly how productive the Aroc tipper setup could be. Fitted with a Hercules body on the truck and a four axle trailer sporting the Euro 6 engine, it also featured a single 390L fuel tank, running 315 steer tyres and 295 on the drives. The PBS approved combo is good to go to 58t, meaning a payload of just over 40t. On the hills around Mt Tambourine, the 530Hp engine wasn’t setting any land speed records, but it also wasn’t lagging around either. I did enjoy the fact that you could feel and hear both the engine and retarder when they were in full swing during our test drive.
The long and short of this test drive was mainly so I could learn more about the production of mulch than I ever needed and to show off the kitset concept that Daimler Trucks Australia Pacific now has in place with the Arocs. With everything now coming together, ready to go on the factory floor, ordering a new state-of-the-art, high productivity PBS approved truck and dog set up just got a lot easier.
Article with thanks to WARREN AITKEN at Owner Driver