Waste management specialist Select Environmental Services has added the first front-end loader to its fleet. The 32-tonne Arocs is also its first truck to be fitted with the manufacturer’s MirrorCam system.
Together with a 6×2 Actros with a lithium-powered compaction body, the eight-wheeler arrived via City West Commercials, an established supplier to the Reading-based operator.
Select provides bespoke recycling, waste management and confidential shredding services across the Thames Valley to the commercial and healthcare sectors and educational establishments, including the Universities of Oxford and Reading.
The company recently invested £3 million in a new Materials Recovery Facility and purchased the front-end loader to extend its recycling collection capabilities. The Arocs has joined a fleet of 30 trucks, the majority of which are Mercedes-Bez, and five vans.
Over the last five years, City West Commercials has also supplied Select with four 18-tonne Arocs skip-loaders, and a pair of 26-tonne Antos refuse compaction vehicles.
Cooperation is essential
Select’s Managing Director, Philip Stone, explained: ‘We have an excellent rapport with the team at City West Commercials. The pricing is always competitive, but more importantly, the company’s experience and expertise in the recycling and waste management sector matters.
‘Putting together a refuse compaction vehicle is a great deal more complex than your average 18-tonne box truck or curtain sider. There’s the chassis supplier, the bodybuilder, occasionally a third-party bin lifter and then all the container weighing and RFID technology to contend with. Every component has to work simultaneously from day one.
‘It is essential that the chassis supplier fully engages with all parties to ensure 100% compatibility before we place our order. In the past, we have had issues with another manufacturer whose chassis hadn’t been appropriately specified and had to be reordered, delaying delivery by over nine months.
‘That’s never happened with a vehicle purchased from City West Commercials. They’ve always gone that extra mile to tick every box; hence we continue to source our new trucks from them.’
The new 8×2 Arocs is a 3240 ENA variant with single-tyred rear axle and 10.7-litre, in-line six-cylinder engine producing 290 kW (394 hp). Its robust and efficient Farid Hillend Engineering front-loading Euro Half Pack bodywork can handle containers weighing up to 3,630 kg, giving it the best lifting capacity in its category.
The eight-wheeler’s ClassicSpace M-cab is 2.3 m wide – the narrower of the two widths available – and has a 320 mm engine tunnel, which means the driver sits relatively low. Coupled with replacing conventional mirrors with the MirrorCam cameras, has eliminated forward-facing blind spots and contributes to the truck’s three-star Transport for London Direct Vision rating. The Arocs is also fitted with a five-way Brigade camera system that enables Select’s operative to view the container emptying process.
The 6×2 Actros has a ClassicSpace S-Cab and, as a 2530 model, employs a 220 kW (300 hp) 7.7-litre ‘straight-six. Its Geesinknorba lithium-powered N4 LLP refuse body is equipped with a trade lift for emptying standard size 240-1,100-litre Euro bins.
Both trucks also feature c-trace dynamic container weighing and RFID technology, which transfers collection data, including individual bin weights to an on-board order management system in real-time.
