THE TRUCK USER.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 8 December 1928, Page 13

THE TRUCK USER.

SOME USEFUL HINTS. POINTS FOR THE BUYER. The commonest faults among truckusers are overloading and overspeedings.. Those faults are the cause of from 80 per cent, to 90 per cent, of all mechanical troubles and breakdowns. Overloading itself, so long as the truck is driven carefully, is not so bad. Overspeeding with normal load is also not so bad. But combine the two evils and you are on the right road to cut the useful life of the track in two or three. A carefully-driven truck will give on an average 150,000 miles, of good service. One that is abused will give from 50,000 to 80,000 miles of indifferent service, besides which petrol consumption is increased by 15 per cent, to 20 per cent, a ton mile, while the life of the tyres is reduced to considerably less than half. Salesmen are responsible in a lot of cases for this abuse. When demonstrating their article, one of their biggest talking points is file overload that their truck will carry, and how much faster it 'will do the job than the opposition’s. In this, way the unintiated buyer is led to. believe that he as doihg no harm by following this example. The intending purchaser would do well when selecting a vehicle for his particular needs to estimate the size of the load he will require to carry, and buy one of the required tonnage, not one that will only do the job by overloading. Do not- let the initial cost have too much bearing on your final decision, as perhaps a 20 per cent, higher priced job will give double the amount of service at a lower cost a ton mile. Accessibility to -working parts is a thing that will save a good many hours of time in the course of a year in making adjustments. Remember that the day of the solid tyre is numbered, and it will not bo very long until they will be taxed off the road in some way or other. In less than a year now solids will be absolutely prohibited in Germany. Although it would not be possible to overload pneumatic tyres to the same extent as solids they reduce running costs by about 10 per cent. Finally, see that the agent for the truck you buy has full range of .spare parts here, not at his head office in some other town.