Scania’s Terminator rises

A $1.5 million custom Scania truck is driving the streets of London looking for sewerage drains

 

In what must be a case of louder-the-better, one company in the UK has had its Scania specially designed to a Terminator theme.

Belonging to Hydro Cleansing Limited, the brightly-coloured vacuum tanker will be deployed to tackle the sewers of London; a task that can involve cleaning and maintaining existing Victorian-era waste management infrastructure that can be as much as 100 metres deep in places.

Unveiled at the Commercial Vehicle show in Birmingham, the Scania cost its owners £750,000 (A$1.5 million) and, with input from Whale Tankers, Kaiser, Tekelite, and Scania, took two years to build.

“There’s the main engine and main gearbox, and then the powertrain is split halfway along the truck, where there is a transfer box with a secondary gearbox that’s an Italian-designed OMSI box,” Hydro Cleansing’s managing director Steve Hoad says.

“The hydraulic auxiliary allows the driver to have separate control of the jetting pumps suction pumps and air compressors that make up the tanker.”

“It’s a machine that’s heavy duty everywhere you look.”

The base of the truck is a four-axle Scania R730 Highline chassis that was further reinforced to handle the vacuum tanker.

The tanker works as a recycling plant for the sewage water, drawing up waste and releasing clean water back into the underground system.

What is stored is taken off-site for further processing.

To accommodate the large vehicle’s movement through London, the truck has a 360-degree camera visibility system supplied by Vision Track, extensive lighting, warning signs and extra training for the engineers and drivers.

The ‘Terminator’ truck joins the ‘Megatron’ in the fleet, which sits on a Scania R620 and cost over than £600,000 (A$1.2 million).

 

Send this to a friend