Jean-Yves Repussard and his Actros with hydraulic auxiliary drive

Jean-Yves Repussard is a true man of the wide, open country. However, after attending agricultural college, he felt no inclination to work on a farm. He wanted to drive a truck instead. But he still wanted to be in the country. For ten years, he picked up chickens from poultry farmers. Then he was able to buy his own tractor vehicle. Twenty-five years later, his company can boast a fleet in Sablé-sur-Sarthe in north-western France with nine semi-trailer tractor units and eighteen drivers working for him.

However, this doesn't prevent Jean-Yves from going on tours himself every day. "I wanted to reduce night work and see my children more often than just on the weekends," he says. Today he delivers animal feed to farms with his tanker trailer.

Jean-Yves used to have to drive a four-axle vehicle to approach the hard-to-reach farms. This entailed a whole series of disadvantages: "It was very thirsty and with its 16-tonne payload, it was not very profitable." Instead of the 40 litres per 100 km of the four-axle vehicle, the Actros consumes only 32 litres.

A further advantage of the system: the tanker can load ten more tons on each tour. Thanks to the new silo semitrailer, the vehicle combination hasn't lost much manoeuvrability compared to the previous four-axle truck, as it has a lifting axle and steering axles at the front. This new tank also has eight chambers so that Jean-Yves can supply several farms per tour. The vehicle also has a hydraulically operated conveyor screw to fill the poultry farmers' silos from above. "A computer controls the screw conveyor that takes the feed high up to the silo. It also controls the opening and closing of the compartments and their cleaning, so that all leftover feed can be removed, ensuring that the chicken feed is not mixed with the feed for the turkeys and vice versa," he explains.