{"id":3668,"date":"2012-08-22T12:12:06","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T12:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=3668"},"modified":"2012-08-22T15:34:16","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T15:34:16","slug":"tnt-continues-5t-trials-with-volkswagen-crafters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/3668","title":{"rendered":"TNT Continues 5t Trials With Volkswagen Crafters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Volkswagen

The 5-tonne VW Crafters purchased by TNT for its trial<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in March, I reported that<\/a> parcels operator TNT was trialling 10 5.2-tonne Iveco Daily box vans at its Bradford<\/a> and Nottingham<\/a> depots, with a view to using them instead of 7.5t trucks.<\/p>\n

TNT is continuing to trial 5 tonne box vans and has now announced a further trial of 1o 5-tonne Volkswagen Crafters at its Bristol<\/a> depot.<\/p>\n

The vans have received a box conversion by Altrincham specialists Cartwright, to the specific requirements of TNT. The Crafters will be based at TNT\u2019s Bristol depot, and were purchased through Volkswagen\u2019s Van Centre in Manchester<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Commenting on the company’s plans to consider a move to 5 tonnes,\u00a0Steve Davis, National Engineering Manager TNT Express Services UK & Ireland, said that the company would make a decision in the next 12 months:<\/p>\n

“Once a decision was made to re-evaluate our current fleet we researched the market place to find manufacturers of five-tonne vehicles that fit the company\u2019s requirements.<\/p>\n

We will be monitoring the cabs over an average annual mileage of around 30,000 miles and hope to make decisions about our van capacity<\/a> and vehicle range in the next 12 months.<\/p>\n

As with all our fleet vehicles, the Crafter will be assessed on a variety of points including fuel economy, operational activity, ease of maintenance and driver evaluation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TNT delivers up to 150 million items per annum and has the largest individual share of the national market. I don’t know how many 7.5-tonne trucks it currently runs, but the contract to replace the majority of them with 5-tonne box vans would be a big win for any manufacturer, even if it was split into several tranches.<\/p>\n

As I’ve discussed previously<\/a>, rigid sales in the 3.5t – 6.0t and 6.0t – 16t weight categories have seen big increases this year; it will be interesting to see whether the search for lower costs and more careful compliance (in terms of overloading) drives ongoing popularity for the van-sized 3.5t-6.0t class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TNT is continuing its evaluation of 5-tonne box vans as a replacement for 7.5t trucks with a batch of 10 5t Volkswagen Crafters, based in Bristol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[259,402],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3668"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3674,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3668\/revisions\/3674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}