Tow truck: the Arocs 4163 with a Masterlift body
Vehicle & technology
Up to 5000 trucks per year – that's the number that Gross, the tow-truck specialists near Stuttgart, have to deal with. And a recent addition to the team: the Arocs with a special-purpose body.
On the hook. Daniel Beyersdorf hooks up a stranded truck. Because the procedure varies from one vehicle to another, expertise and sensitivity are required.
Daniel Beyersdorf has just passed the yellow signpost that announces the town of Nürtingen, when he presses his horn. A man on the pavement turns towards the road, grins and waves up to the driver's cab. "That was my truck driving instructor. He'd never have dreamed that I'd one day drive a thing like this," says Beyersdorf. The "thing" is an Arocs with a Masterlift body. 460 kW of pure power and a hydraulic lifter arm at the rear with two massive cable winches – enough power and technology to pull a 100-tonne vehicle out of a ditch and tow it away.
Daniel Beyersdorf's employer has a logo in red capitals on both sides of the special Arocs: GROSS. The company was set up in the early 1950s as a petrol station with a fitter's workshop, in the small town of Köngen near Stuttgart, and has now grown to a major corporation group with around 400 employees at 23 sites. The fleet comprises almost 340 trucks and transporters, almost all manufactured by Mercedes-Benz. The extensive portfolio still includes a petrol station, but also garages where vehicles can be stored safely, and a certified scrap dealership.
Transporting cars plays an important role. "We mainly have to deal with special jobs," says Rainer Petermann, who is the third-generation manager of the company. Gross's business is to transport test vehicles for manufacturers and vehicles for film productions, all over Europe. Also, they carry out transfers for major car showrooms. "For example, we take new and used cars to be painted, and return them." Last year they dealt with a total of around 80,000 transport jobs.
An even more important task is recovery and towing. Roughly 250,000 vehicles is the number that the company towed away or loaded onto transporters last year. "We are on call 365 days a year, right around the clock; our crews are on permanent stand-by", says company director Bruno Noce. Besides Baden-Württemberg, the Dresden region is a major centre, as one of their large branches is there. Another has now opened in Spain. "We transport cars that have had accidents or breakdowns from there back to Germany, and also from Switzerland or northern Italy." Gross is a partner of the German ADAC and the Austrian ÖAMTC motor clubs, and of a number of insurance companies. "If a vehicle insured by one of these companies breaks down, we're the ones that tow the car away."
In contact. The towing truck has to provide the stranded truck with electricity and compressed air.
As Arocs driver Beyersdorf says, the "supreme discipline" is rescuing and towing trucks – after a breakdown or collision, or if they have gone off the road in the winter. The experts rescue up to 5000 trucks and their drivers from tricky spots. And the numbers are rising. "Heavy transport is really on the increase," says Petermann.
"If a truck breaks down, normally, if nothing else goes amiss, no one is injured. But the truck is out of action all the same – and often there are hundreds or even thousands of motorists stuck in a traffic jam as a result." So the recovery process must run smoothly. "We can do that, because we have a dense network and a strong fleet." The breakdown fleet for trucks consists of ten heavy Masterlift trucks. The basic vehicle of the two most recent members of the team: the Arocs 4163 with the most powerful engine variant, the OM 473 15.6-litre, six-cylinder in-line engine. "Those are giants with amazing strength and powerful torque," says Petermann. "And don't forget: the engine is low-emission, economical Euro VI. We use the engines with the lowest emissions available at the time, as a matter of principle."
Thanks to the turbo retarder clutch, even if the towing trucks have to recover a "monster", they can start moving effortlessly and without wear or tear. "And on top of that you've got an overload chassis, and springs and stabilisers all adapted to heavy duty, and the cooling system is designed for overload too," says Petermann. That means that a truck that was robust anyway becomes even more hardwearing. Details such as headlamps with protective cross-bars are the "icing on the cake".
On the road to success. Owner Rainer Petermann (left) and managing director Bruno Noce in front of the two most powerful vehicles in Gross's fleet.
The Masterlift bodies from special manufacturer Brechtel are in a class of their own. The hydraulic lifting arm is not only designed to cope with the heaviest of loads, but it can be lowered particularly far down, almost to the asphalt, to pick up the stranded truck. "That means no damage while we're towing," explained Bruno Noce. "After all, there'd be trouble if a job ended with a bent chassis."
One speciality of the body: "The catalytic converter system is installed right up high behind the driver's cab. That means it can't be affected in any way by the great heat that can be produced when a vehicle is being towed." And in the centre behind the cab there is the additional tank, with a volume of almost 1000 litres, into which the fuel from the faulty truck is pumped. All the equipment for recovery and securing the scene of the accident is stowed in storage compartments on either side of the truck.
"Brechtel and Mercedes-Benz are two ideal partners," says Petermann – who has already bought the next Arocs. "It's just being fitted with its body; that will take a few months." The plan is to increase Gross's Masterlift fleet from ten to fifteen by 2018. And for future new additions, they are planning to use the Arocs as a basis.
That's a decision that Daniel Beyersdorf is pleased about too: "It's not just the power: with the Arocs, everything harmonises. You've got superb vision, it's comfortable to drive with its twelve-gear automatic transmission, it's got great power steering, and there's surprisingly little noise when you're going along." And just as important from the point of view of the driver: the GigaSpace L-cab is amply sized.
The 37-year-old driver took his truck driving test years ago, when he was a member of the local voluntary fire brigade. He recently met one of his former team comrades – at one of his first major operations using an Arocs Masterlift: "Their big truck with a turntable ladder had tipped over going round a bend." And of course, no question, the recovery went smoothly there too.
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