DAF reveals its latest Euro 6-powered 8×4 chassis aimed at the construction sector
By Steev Hayes
Photography Steev Hayes

It looks like there could be a new dawn just around the corner, which may be hugely beneficial to the road transport industry – the construction of new housing.

Despite the construction industry flat-lining all through the recession, there is cross-party agreement that the UK is suffering a major housing shortfall, and there are moves afoot to put that right by planning a massive increase in house building programmes across the UK.

Ironically, another major part of that new dawn is the HS2 high-speed rail project which, it is claimed, will improve business links between the South and the North. This will involve a lot of demolition work as well as construction, and both these initiatives will require large numbers of trucks to haul spoil, aggregates, tarmac, bricks and blocks and other commodities to and from the various sites. Perhaps the Big Seven truck manufacturers saw this as an ideal opportunity and so began announcing their Euro 6 construction chassis, which they have been doing individually since the beginning of last year.

Despite a decidedly altered economic climate at the end of 2016, Scania ended on a high. After a successful launch of its new R and S series in Paris (Trucking, October 2016), top brass said order intake for both have been healthy.

“We are selling everything we can produce and orders keep coming in,” said Christopher Podgorski, senior vice president, Scania Trucks. He said so far, only the firm’s Södertälje plant is producing the new generation. The main plants for final assembly – Zwolle and Anger – will not come online until Scania introduces vehicles for other applications.

Recently, we had the opportunity to test drive Scania’s new long-haulers on the frozen roads of Trysil, Norway, to see how they fared in some extreme winter conditions. Podgorski pointed out operators in Norway were taking to the new vehicles.

“By January, some 100 trucks from the new generation were in the hands of happy Norwegian customers,” he said.

The temperature on the day of our tests was a balmy -12 degrees C, and the forest region’s country highways were treacherous with ice along the entirety of our route, which began at Scania’s test base on the outskirts of Nybergsund and took us down a long, twisting descent along Route 25 to a bridge over a river. Once on the other side, we circled a roundabout before heading back up
the highway towards the demo centre…