Thirty years after the haulier last ran a Mercedes-Benz truck, Aberdeen-based William Walker Transport has commissioned a New Actros tractor unit, anticipating significant fuel savings.
A trial with a demonstration Actros tractor achieved a return of just over 8 mpg, compared with William Walker's other top-weight tractors, whch typically achieve 7.25—7.8mpg.
Specified with the aerodynamic 2.5m-wide StreamSpace cab, Walker's New Actros 2545 is powered by the 450bhp straight-six engine, mated to a Mercedes PowerShift 3 automated transmission.
"We've been hearing and reading a lot of good reports about the fuel-efficiency of the New Actros, so we decided the time was right to take a look," explains joint owner Jim Walker.
"Mercedes-Benz Commercial Vehicles Aberdeen supplied us with a demonstration unit, which we ran for a week and that went well, The fuel returns were very encouraging and the driver liked it too," he adds.
Walker says that, while the Actros was competitively priced, it wasn't the cheapest of the vehicles the company looked at.
"But we like to run our trucks for at least 10 years, so fuel efficiency and whole life running costs are more important to us than the up front price. It was on this basis that we decided to give the Mercedes-Benz a try," he explains.