From an employee driver’s point of view, it’s always fascinating reading reviews of trucks — but even an intensive review won’t necessarily tell you what a rig is like to live with every day.
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Automatics are a case in point. A supremely confident manufacturer might assure us the best torque range is say 1,100 – 1,350rpm, but in real life, you find the rig lugs under load and you need to slip into manual mode before you miss the lights for the second sequence and hold up the local hoons (the car carrier boys).
I drive casually for a great Perth-based company, taking a tanker (seawater) from Welshpool to Fremantle and back. There are two rigs on the run — one is an IVECO 450 auto that’s just turned over 64,000km. Comfortable, quiet, a perfect fit for the task, with a fantastic retarder that virtually obviates the need to use the foot pedal.
They’ve just replaced an older prime mover with a new Sitrak, the Chinese brand from Sinotruck, 25 per cent owned by the German MAN company and running MAN drive trains.
The prime mover is only a couple of weeks old and as I write this, has just turned over 2,800km. There’s little point in mentioning power and torque — suffice to say we’re running at around 42.0t each way and there are really only a couple of gradients on the Leach Hwy to even consider. Both the IVECO and the Sitrak, running 12 speed autos, end up in ninth climbing loaded.
Yesterday, the manager asked me what the Sitrak was like. An interesting question, as there are two answers — depending on whether you own it or you’re driving it. The company had hired a MAN from Penske for the previous two months, while waiting on delivery of the Sitrak, so I’ve been able to compare the Sitrak with the MAN.
The price and warranty made the Sitrak deal irresistible. We do no off-road work, no road train duties, and only travel around 200km per day. The biggest wear factor to our prime movers is the salt water and yes — both prime movers have been thoroughly covered in protective solution. From a company point of view, it’s a brand-new truck with a four-year warranty for the price of a second hand European prime mover. A no-brainer.
However, living with the Sitrak 11 to 12 hours a day as a driver does throw up a few niggles.
There’s an annoying deep droning sound seemingly from a combination of the engine and exhaust. It fills the cab and it’s headache inducing — a “two Panadol a day” sort of noise. Pulling her down a gear gets rid of it for a while, but then it’s back throbbing when it slips into cruising mode.
It’s got cameras on the sides, front and rear. As soon as you flick an indicator, the camera screen comes on, whichever side you’ve indicated and turns the radio down — it gets tempting not to use the indicators.
But wait, there’s more to that — the truck has Bluetooth, but it’s basic — number only and again, as soon as you use an indicator, if you happen to be on the phone, it cuts out — infuriating if you’re taking an important work-related call. Not only that, but there doesn’t appear to be an accessory position for the ignition key, so there’s no listening to the radio or anything when you’re parked up. There might be one, but I haven’t managed to find it – which brings us to the manual. It’s cheap, only a few pages long, and not particularly informative.
Then there’s the speedo. Thankfully there’s a digital speed readout, as the speedometer is counter-intuitive — it’s on the right of the instrument cluster and the needle rises from the bottom right towards the top left. It’s actually disconcerting, so you ignore it.
Finally, the air conditioning system. Although it’s excellent, it doesn’t come back on when you fire up the rig, you have to turn it on separately. Plus, all the settings disappear, so you have to go through everything manually to reset. Worse still, the panel is set down low to the left, and you have to take your eyes off the road to adjust it. So, there’s no choice but to spend an extra minute when you fire up, resetting the aircon.
Those niggles aside, it seems like a good truck, but the MAN had none of these annoying faults. At this stage, if I’ve got a choice for the day’s work, I’ll grab the IVECO keys.
It’s often said the IVECO is the poor man’s Volvo. If that’s the case, the Sitrak is the poor man’s IVECO.
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