Synergy Hire – a new plant hire company operating out of Letchworth – has taken delivery of its first brand new 32-tonne truck, featuring a bespoke-built plant body from Andover Trailers.
The new 8×2 Volvo FM450 rigid joins two similar used trucks in the Synergy Hire fleet, which were specifically chosen because they too came complete with Andover bodies.
John Fitzpatrick, Director at Synergy Hire, says: “Though we’re a new business, the team we have in place are certainly not new to the industry. Collectively we’ve got decades of experience, so to ensure total confidence in the reliability of the vehicles we brought in from the outset, we knew Andover Trailers was the only option – putting it simply, their bodies just don’t break.
“I’ve been specifying Andover builds for more than 20 years, so I was never going to look anywhere else. The build quality is so good that when it comes to selling these assets on in years to come, the bodies will likely be worth more than the trucks they’re sitting on.”
The new plant body includes a double crank beavertail connected to a pair of 3.3m long hydraulic power toe, knife-edged ramps, built with Andover’s pioneering fold-forward design. These help to reduce drag and deliver impressive fuel savings, allowing Synergy Hire to reduce the carbon footprint of its fleet.
Precision designed to each specific chassis, the new body features Andover Trailers’ trademark low-profile deck, which is achieved by engineering the cross members to transect the body runners, rather than simply sitting on top. The new truck also benefits from a full working at height system, as well as an electric winch rated to six tonnes to aid loading and unloading. Eight pairs of lashing points on the deck ensure maximum load security and flexibility.
“We’re looking to quickly establish ourselves and plans are in place to open four new depots across the country. Each new site will have three or four rigids in its fleet and because we need to ensure that we have the right tools for the job in place, we’ll be specifying Andover bodies for all of them,” adds Fitzpatrick.
The new vehicle will remain in operation for around seven years and will deliver plant to sites across the country six days a week, clocking up around 200,000 kilometres per year.
