Volvo Trucks have been loaning the UK’s leading pub company and brewer Greene King a Volvo FM Electric 4×2 prime mover and PowerTorque’s European Correspondent, Will Shiers made a trip to the east of England to see what they thought of it.
Greene King’s primary transport manager, Paul Brett is in charge of the primary fleet, which consists of 19, predominantly DAF XF, prime movers, 20 tanker trailers and 30 curtainsided trailers. The tankers are 28,000-litre ISO tanks, mounted onto skeletal chassis.
This primary fleet predominantly travels between Bury St Edmunds and Greene King’s two English distribution centres in Abingdon and Eastwood, its Belhaven Brewery in Scotland and a canning plant in Burton upon Trent, in central England. Due to the long distances covered, and the fact that some of the prime movers are double-shifted, electric propulsion is currently not viable. A Volvo FM Electric prime mover, with its six 90kWh batteries, will manage up to 300km on a full charge.
However, a handful of the prime movers rarely leave Bury St Edmunds, travelling the few kilometres between the brewery, its distribution centre and bottling plant, several times a day. Short journeys like this, predominantly through the town centre, are the natural habitat for battery-powered trucks. And it’s this work that Brett tried the electric Volvo at.
“This feels and looks like any other Volvo,” he exclaimed, having made himself comfortable in the driver’s seat. Like many people who drive an electric truck for the first time, he was no doubt expecting something far more futuristic. But the reality is that electric trucks don’t need to look like something out of a science fiction film. The more like a regular diesel truck they are, the easier it is for someone to jump out of one and into the other.
“Oh wow! This is amazing. Not hearing anything when you’re driving is quite surreal,” he said, as he drove the solo prime mover from the distribution centre to the bottling plant, a journey of about 2km. As we drove, he told me that Greene King has recently announced that it will soon be moving to a new distribution centre on the outskirts of town, having outgrown the current one.
When we arrived, we saw several of the 20-strong tanker fleet parked up. They’ve all recently been wrapped by local firm Coastline Graphics, and look fantastic.
Brett began to reverse the FM Electric under a trailer, and was shocked by how easy the process was. “This is fantastic for low-speed manoeuvring, as you feel like you have complete control,” he announced. The coupling process is exactly the same as it would be with a diesel truck, and the only challenge was trying to work out how to access the hidden steps onto the catwalk. On a diesel truck, the steps would be built into the fuel tank.
“The power is instantaneous,” said Brett, as we pulled out of the bottling plant and commenced the short journey to the brewery. “It means when you pull away at a roundabout, there’s no gear changing, and no risk of impeding anyone.”
The FM Electric has the equivalent of 666hp, and it’s all available from a standing start. Although it does in fact have a 12-speed I-Shift transmission, it actually only ever uses two gears. That said, there is a manual override should you want it.
The Greene King brewery was built over 200 years ago, and was designed for horse-drawn drays, so is incredibly tight for a modern semi. I was certainly glad it was Brett behind the wheel and not me, as he expertly turned it around in this restricted space, then reversed it into the brewery for filling.
Under normal circumstances we would have waited the 90 minutes needed to clean out the tanker and refill it with beer, before taking it back to the bottling plant. However, seeing as 28,000 litres of beer would make the outfit weigh 43,700kg, and the maximum GVW for a five-axle truck in the UK is 40 tonnes, we had to have to leave it there for one of the DAF XF 6x2s to collect.
I initially suggested filling it to 25,000 litres instead, which would have allowed it to come in at under 40 tonnes, but Brett politely informed me that this would not be a good idea. The tanks aren’t baffled, and allowing the beer to agitate inside the tanker would not be good for its condition, creating a lot of froth.
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