In the latest of an occasional series on specialist vans you are unlikely to be able to hire, I thought I’d take a look at the latest Mercedes-Benz Sprinter to join the fleet of specialist courier PDQ Specialist Courier Services.
PDQ specialises in the delivery throughout Europe of termperature-controlled, time critical shipments of pharmaceutical and hazardous goods, including medical and scientific samples. A recent job required the firm to transport a biopsy sample from a brain tumour patient, taken by a Harley Street specialist, to a laboratory in Frankfurt.
PDQ’s latest van is a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 313CDI chassis cab with a twin-compartment insulated body box, a Carrier Transicold refrigeration unit and a truck-style sleeper compartment behind the van cab.
Vans with sleepers are relatively unusual, but the more common configuration — used on some of PDQ’s other Sprinters — is a cab-top sleeper pod. This has the advantage of not eating into the van’s load space. A full sleeper cab is a very unusual configuration indeed.
Managing Director Brian Brennan has operated Mercedes vans ever since he founded the business as an owner-driver 18 years ago. He now has a fleet of 23 Mercedes-Benz vans which include Citan, Vito and Sprinter models.
He says that the marque offers a combination of unfailing reliability and outstanding support when things do go wrong:
“We need to have complete faith in our vehicles, and that’s what Mercedes-Benz gives us. Our vans are worked extremely hard, each covering an average of 100,000 miles a year, but we know we can depend on them. In 18 years of operation the number of breakdowns we’ve suffered is negligible, and when something has failed it’s invariably a minor wear-and-tear part rather than a significant fault with the vehicle itself.
“We know we can rest easy because help is never far away, thanks to the Mercedes-Benz MobiloVan cover which includes first-class 24-hour breakdown cover anywhere in Europe. The manufacturer’s three-year unlimited mileage warranty also means our vehicles are still covered with 300,000 miles on the clock.”
You can find out more about Wirral-based PDQ on the firm’s website.