trailer world issue One 2009

32 Issue One 2009 are part of daily routine on the dirt roads, let alone problems with inferior fuel and tech- nical defects. The imported fuel diluted with up to twenty percent water comes from civil war-torn Sudan and is brought in a never- ending line of tanker vehicles from the port in the neighbouring country of Djibouti. The poor-quality adulterated fuel nearly always causes problems. By African standards, the diesel price of 60 cents per litre is relatively expensive. And a truck fully loaded with a good 65 tonnes of goods consumes an av- erage of 60 litres for 100 kilometres on the stony tracks. Road transport – the vital ar- tery in the poor house of Africa – does not come cheap here. Most of the vehicles facing the adverse conditions every day on the domestic routes havegotwhatittakesatleastintheory,having been designed in Europe as oﬀ-road trucks. Reinforced leaf-spring suspension systems, double stepped-down drive axles, tube tyres, twin tyres also on the trailer and heavy solid steel bumpers are supposed to help the driv- er cope with the rigours of the journey. Only just 36,000 trucks are to be found on Ethio- pians roads and tracks – a ridiculously small number, compared to Germany. But the need for transport grows constant- ly. Enterprising Chinese road construction companies are hard at work, tarring mile af- ter mile of the ramshackle road network. The work produced by the Chinese is of a qual- ity far superior to the local companies and contributes to constant development of the major West-East routes. The aim above all is to improve the completely inadequate basic provisioning of the country’s interior market. For the people living here, hope rolls on the back of the trucks to the most remote parts of the country. There is strong growth in the demand for modern means of transport here in Ethiopia with its weak infrastructure. Meskin Tefera, general manager of the semi-state owned transport company Weyra, knows the everyday problems of the trans- port branch in Ethiopia. His 50 truck trains – nearly all of them Iveco Eurotrakkers – op- erate mainly on the routes to the neighbour- ing states of Djibouti and Sudan and back to Addis Ababa. With 45,000 litres of fuel in their tanks, the articulated lorries will be on the road for ﬁve days at a time covering 1,850 kilometres of frequently hazardous roads before returning to the central depot. The ﬂeet manager has to expect an average of one breakdown per tour – usually ﬂat tyres or engine problems caused by the poor fuel. Often there is only a tiny margin left at the end of the journey. Which is why the com- Poor fuel kills the engines International Quality for heavy duty Trailer manufacturer Maru in Addis Ababa makes more than 200 trailers to German DIN standards every year. Company boss Dayan Maru (in the middle) swears by Ger- man steel and BPW axles. Photos:Kienberger,Willms

trailer world issue One 2009

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