A variety of outdoor activities took place alongside my walking route, last Monday. And some folks were just sitting down by the riverside, relaxing. Let’s start today’s tour, I’ll get back to this good ol’ Golf later.
On the left a 2007 Iveco Daily 40C12 crew cab flatbed truck, on the right a 2011 Volkswagen Caddy 1.6 TDI panel van.
The Iveco is powered by a 2.3 liter turbodiesel. The light truck is a typical example of a contractor’s runabout, all work and no play.
The Dekkers company arrived at the scene with some serious off-road machinery too. Many contractors use 4WD, 200+ hp farm tractors for both agricultural work and earth moving. The tandem axle trailer gets a full load, the cargo covers are hanging down on each side of the dump bed.
The tractor is a Fendt 722 Vario, a current model of the 700-series. It’s powered by a Deutz 6,056 cc inline-six engine, good for 220 hp.
Fendt has an excellent reputation among farmers and contractors. A premium brand, so to say. They don’t come cheap, but their depreciation is relatively low.
From earth moving to agriculture, featuring another Fendt. An older series, with the more sharp-lined fenders. The tractor is towing a Krone ZX 450 GL self-loading silage wagon with a capacity of 45 m³ (1,589 ft³).
2010 Opel Combo 1.3 CDTI ecoFLEX panel van. The last Combo model by Opel, based on the third generation of the Opel Corsa subcompact hatchback. The next series, introduced in 2011, was a rebadged Fiat Doblò II (aka the Ram ProMaster City).
The current Combo is a rebadged PSA product, known as the Peugeot Partner and Citroën Berlingo. By the way, also marketed as the Toyota ProAce City. Have your pick.
The Opel above is owned by a demolition and recycling company. Most likely, the van is the commuter car of the excavator operator.
There he is, hiding behind a 2008 Scania R480 8×4, loading old bricks into the container. As you can see, a chassis with a hooklift system can perfectly function as a dump truck.
Another Scania straight truck with four axles, carrying an open top container, yet with another axle configuration. It’s a 2007 Scania R560 V8 8×2. The tridem axle set-up, from left to right: a liftable and steering pusher axle, the drive axle and a liftable tag axle. This truck is rated at a legal maximum gross weight of 36 metric tons vs 37 metric tons for De Ruiter’s 8×4.
You’re absolutely right that the truck’s livery looks familiar, as I posted other rigs of this company here, here and here. Scania V8 parking only. All other vehicles will be towed.
Now it’s time to relax, here are three Fiat Ducato based motorhomes. From left to right: a 2004 Hymer, 2015 Carthago and 1999 Rapido.
Just to put things into perspective.
The last of the tour, a 1997 Volkswagen Golf III 1.6 CL. Back to basic, still going strong.
Related article:
2017 New Holland T7.230 AutoCommand And 2018 BECO Maxxim 260 – Not For Farm Work
Johannes, I’ve been meaning to compliment all of your posts but haven’t gotten around to it, so here goes…
You have a fabulous knack for showing us what to you are ordinary, everyday vehicles – cars, trucks, and vans that I suspect the average Dutchman ignores every single day.
But I suspect most of CC’s readers are in North America and those vehicles that are common to you are very interesting to those of us who never see them.
And I thank you for that.
Thank you very much, Evan. Indeed, all of these rides are utterly ordinary around here. Folks must think there’s something wrong with me (from the eyebrows up) when seeing me taking pictures of an old Opel Combo or Iveco Daily…
Exactly. Sorry Johannes but usually the vehicles in your posts are very boring 🙂 (for me as another Dutchman)
But I can imagine they are interesting for the US readers!
Johannes, I always enjoy your posts but, like Evan, don’t get around to thank you for them.
What sparked this comment was how warm it is for me the use of the word “mishmash”, a Yiddish word that entered English (or Yinglish, as some say referring to NYC English rubbed with Yiddish) and that was commonly used by my 4 Lithuanian-born, Yiddish speaking grandparents and parents (I still use it a little bit).
So, once again, this site and its posts bring forward in us much more than vehicles, but warm stories.
As I began saying, Johannes, I enjoy a lot your posts. Keep at it, trucks are a whole different world.
There’s a little info that might make my comment more understandable. English is not, as you will notice by my writing, my native language, as all those grandparents came to America, but not to North America but to the far-south located Uruguay, 95 years ago. So, I ended up speaking Spanish.
Ha! I didn’t know that about mishmash. But now you mention it, the word has a very Yiddish “vibe”.
Your last perspective picture with all three motorhomes and the barge with tugboat might be a glimpse of the future of american pickup truck design. The majority of current half ton pickup trucks barely fit into a standard size garage due to excessive proportions. As an American my observation is within 10 years pickup trucks will grow to such size they will require elevators for safe entrance and egress. The tugboat design is clever because it hydraulically lifts up the entire pilot house so the pilot can see past the tow with access to all controls. Future pickup truck cabs might have the same setup so when on the road they raise to the height of a commercial tracker trailer.
Plausible.
“As an American my observation is within 10 years pickup trucks will grow to such size they will require elevators for safe entrance and egress.”
Full-size pickups have barely grown in the past 20 years, though.
“Volkswagen Caddy” will always sound funny to this half-American/half Canadian…
I like the Michelin men on the front of the yellow sleeper scania
That Krone silage wagon reminds me of one of those stack wagons from the ’70s:
Sweet! I never saw anything like that. Silage wagons have grown (very much) in the past decades, also becoming more enclosed and slick looking over the years, but they still do what their predecessors did a very long time ago.
Our generic term for a self-loading silage wagon is an “opraapwagen”, a pick-up-wagon…
Your posts are always interesting, and the landscape interests me as much as the vehicles having worked in Holland for for two weeks/year for 15 years or so. It reminds me very much of the US Midwest. The pic of the three motorhomes could be eastern Kansas; the Golf, Iowa.
Except for one thing: what is that tree above the the photo captioned ‘The Dekkers company arrived at the scene with some serious off-road machinery too.’ ? It’s very unusual. I want one.
That must be a pollard willow (knotwilg, in Dutch).
Thank you. Looked it up and it turns out that pollarding is a tree trimming technique and willows particularly lend themselves to it. So do crepe myrtals but they grow only in warmer climes in the US.
Pollard willows thrive in the wetlands. They’re very common here, often you see whole rows of them alongside waterways.
Lots of the things you post are quite familiar Johannes the trucks vans and tractors all exist here in varying numbers though axle configurations on trucks would not work for the most part, somebody is trying a 6×2 Scania with liftable tag tractor unit first one Ive noticed super singles on the steer and tag and twin tyres on the drive unusual here where tandem drive is the norm, two of those 3 campers are on our roads mostly as rentals.
The liftable, dual wheeled tag axle dates back to the late fifties (truck maker Vanaja, Finland). More payload capacity, obviously, and extra traction on the drive axles (weight) when needed, by lifting the tag axle. Those Finnish chassis were often 4×4, the liftable tag axle was essentially an add-on.
About 10 years later, many Scandinavian built heavy trucks and tractors had them. Way before air suspension became common.
Yep they were a common feature here years ago but got phased out by tandem drives 8 drive tyres locked mechanically make a powerfull arguement off highway
By the way, both Sisu (Finland) and Volvo offer a liftable drive axle. On a 6×4 tractor, for example.
Yes, Thank you, Johannes, for the large vehicle pictures, but I want to give a shout-out to the A3 Golf. glad you included it in your mishmash…one that I missed….I currently have an A4 Golf, previously owning an A1 Scirocco and and A2 GTi, and wish I hadn’t waited until 2000 to buy my A4 Golf. I think of the A3s as being the last of the “tall” Golfs, with higher seating and instrument panel. My current A4 has lower seating, but I think of it as a compromise, probably gets a bit better gas mileage (more rake to the windshield) but packaging isn’t as nice for taller people especially.
The green color is nice also…we don’t see this color much anymore in the US, it seems old fashioned to me in a way. Never myself owned a green car, but my Father (being Irish) seemed to buy a lot of them, of course they were a more popular color way back when he was in his prime vehicle purchasing time.