DA Commercials is based in the village of Beer and provides haulage services to the construction sector. Its eight trucks deliver concrete, Tarmac, aggregates and sand throughout the South West.
Acquired with funding support from Mercedes-Benz Finance, the latest addition to the fleet is working out of Stoneycombe Quarry, near Newton Abbott, and serves sites in and around Exeter. Each load represents a round trip of approximately 40 miles.
Owner-driver Dan Ayling established DA Commercials in 2013 and purchased his first construction-specification 8x4 Arocs from City West Commercials the following year. The new truck is his fourth and the most potent yet, having been specified with the highest of the five outputs available from Mercedes-Benz Trucks’ 12.8-litre OM 471 in-line six-cylinder engine.
It has a ClassicSpace M-cab and an insulated aluminium tipping body by Aliweld, of Ryton, Newcastle upon Tyne. High-tech driver aids include MirrorCam, the camera-based replacement for conventional mirrors, and Multimedia Cockpit which comes with extra functionality, including satellite navigation.
Fitted with a roof-mounted Ecco light bar and Alcoa Dura-Bright alloy wheels, the high-riding truck wears the colours of leading customer Aggregate Industries. So, too, does the Arocs 3243 truck mixer with 10.7-litre, 422 ‘straight six’ and body by McPhee, Glasgow, that DA Commercials purchased last September.
Dan Ayling explained: “The mixer makes up to six deliveries a day and the journeys are shorter – sometimes it won’t do more than 20 miles in a day but it spends a lot of time ticking over on sites. Whereas the tipper has to get over the top of Telegraph Hill five times a day. We’ve found that using bigger engines for this work is both quicker and more fuel-efficient, because the truck is not having to work as hard.”
Ayling previously favoured a Swedish truck brand but now believes that Mercedes-Benz offers the best combination of product technology and service. He is a big fan of MirrorCam: “Rear visibility is certainly better – reversing into tight spots is very easy now,” he said.
“More importantly, though, by doing away the mirrors and replacing them with roof-mounted cameras Mercedes-Benz has also effectively eliminated a massive, forward-facing blind spot. I’ve been driving for more than 20 years and can tell you that’s a huge safety benefit, particularly on the approaches to roundabouts.”
As with its previous Arocs, the new tipper is the subject of a six-year Mercedes-Benz complete service contract, and maintained at the nine-bay workshop on the Greendale Business Park at Woodbury Salterton, Exeter, that City West Commercials opened in 2018.