Chausson le mor Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 I spent 35 years in the forklift truck industry selling mainly German manufacturers machines one of the best makes fitted Mercedes engines in nearly 20 years of supplying and maintaining them never once did we have to replace an engine and in many industries forklifts are well abused! So yes I rate the Mercedes but like most things in life you get what you pay for! My swift Mondial is a sevel machine but I would only consider a peugeot variant as they have a much better dealer set up and back up service ( I have run all types of Peugeot/Citreon cars from the Peugeot 205 to the Citreon C5 and reckon Peugeot has the edge on dealer back up. Also owned several Fiats in the 80's after sales what a joke!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 1footinthegrave Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 IH motorhomes are now doing a PVC conversion on a LWB Merc, if you've got 66 k to spare ! ! http://www.ihmotorhomes.com/new-motorhomes/details/285/2/new-vehicles/ih-tio-m-automatic.html :-S Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nowtelse2do Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 City Link also use Merc, but all the big firms will have a small percentage of other makes on their books just to evaluate them. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brock Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 Accepting the topic has moved away, one of the reasons commercial fleets do not buy Mercs is because of the size of pallets it takes. It is too narrow, the Iveco Daily is too heavy for load margins. Hence you will see Mercs on high mileage but narrow loads and Iveco's on the bigger weight bearing chassis. Ford, PSA and Renault compete for the high load volume business at 3.5 tonnes. The Fiat/Peugeot and Trannie have good widths which leads to less compromise from converters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike88 Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 Rayjsj wrote "Mike88 where do you drive ?? As I see differant amounts of vehicle makes to you" Mainly France and Spain where you hardly see a Merc commercial van. I live in sleepy Devon and in my area deliveries are made mainly by DHL and Home Delivery Network using Fiat's and Transits. Not yet seen a delivery by a Merc. But I don't drive that much in the UK so bow to your greater knowledge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rod_vw Posted August 18, 2011 Share Posted August 18, 2011 For those who don't understand the enthusiasm for the smaller PV conversions, i.e. on a modern Volkswagen T5 I suggest that you have a read of the current edition of 'Volkswagen Driver' magazine. No, it's not an 'in house' publication but purely a serious independent enthusiast's magazine and as such often prints owner’s opinions whether good or bad. Maybe a T5 is not the thing for weeks on end in Europe (although we use ours like that!) it obviously has a major place in the market. Very much 'Horses for Courses'. And yes ours is 'Self Build' and it didn't cost £40,000 plus but does have all the fittings that you would expect for its class including a Reimo Variotech seating making it an fully adaptable vehicle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euroserv Posted August 18, 2011 Share Posted August 18, 2011 Hello, In answer to Ray's comment (suggesting that I was wrong about the Ducato being the best driving and best value van available in the UK)..... If you were to put a group of drivers behind the wheel of the Ducato, Transit, Sprinter, Master and Daily they would be more likely to like the way that the Fiat handles and drives. If you then assembled a group of fleet managers and armed them with the running costs, parts and purchase prices and asked them which made more sense they would have to say that in bold monetary terms the Fiat is best on paper but some past experiences may make them hesitant. The truth is that few large fleets have run the Ducato over the years and therefore it is still shrouded in some mystery. I have said before that we have exclusively run Fiats for about 13 years and have been very pleased indeed. Not only with the relatively low running costs, reasonable parts prices and value in the purchase price but in the continually strong demand for them as second-hand sales. Every major town or city has at least one large site selling ex-fleet Mercs and they don't seem to be sold very quickly do they? Naturally there is a reason for the dominance of the Ford Transit in the UK and that is a combination of it being the default; non- controversial option and the continuing myth that it is British. The reason for the large number of Mercedes Benz vehicles is just down to badge snobbery. Even though such vans are nigh on useless in snow and ice conditions, are too fast for the seemingly lunatic drivers and are unstable when trying to avoid an accident; at the end of the day the badge is much more important than safety, money or usability to some fleets. We service and repair Renault, Ford and Mercedes vehicles and are never short of amazed when we find out how much parts cost, and how little the dealers are prepared or able to help with the more technical issues. I will be content with my Fiats and the wealth of knowledge that we have accumulated over the years. Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Leake Posted August 18, 2011 Share Posted August 18, 2011 I've worked what it's all about now but thinking PVC plastic I was wondering why this site had so many hits! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Leake Posted August 18, 2011 Share Posted August 18, 2011 I have noticed that lot of the very high milage fleets such as couriers run Mercs and I can only suppose they must know what they are doing, but none of us will ever return the sort of milage they do so it is hardly relevant. The fact that they don't move very quickly as secondhand vans is most likely that they tend to have very high milage on them and will be expensive to repair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Peter James Posted August 18, 2011 Share Posted August 18, 2011 I have spoken to about twenty X2/50 van drivers to ask about the judder (none of them had even heard of it) I found the same as Nick - they all liked the van. One who had both in the fleet said it was more popular with drivers than the Sprinter. PS: I sometimes wonder if some motorhome owners expect better because they expect it to drive like a £60,000 car, instead of a £16,000 van (with a £44,000 load in the back)? Certainly whitevanman, who is used to vans, seems much happier with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin Posted August 18, 2011 Share Posted August 18, 2011 1footinthegrave - 2011-08-13 1:49 PM IH motorhomes are now doing a PVC conversion on a LWB Merc, if you've got 66 k to spare ! ! http://www.ihmotorhomes.com/new-motorhomes/details/285/2/new-vehicles/ih-tio-m-automatic.html :-S £9000 cheaper than the coachbuilt http://www.ihmotorhomes.com/new-motorhomes/details/291/2/new-vehicles/ih-j500m-automatic.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euroserv Posted August 19, 2011 Share Posted August 19, 2011 Hello, Let's face it; the vast majority of the vans that we see every day are parcel delivery vans. They need to be as big as possible while still carrying a reasonable weight. Fiat does not go beyond 4m long and 15m2 (the extra high version is neither use nor ornament to most people). Merc and VW make one at 4.7m and Iveco go to 4.5m but because of the heavy ladder type chassis they are incapable of carrying more than 1100kg so are ruled out. Renault are a bit of an unknown but are a bit behind on volume and payload. Even though (because of it's exceptional 'squareness') the Fiat has a similar volume to the Mercs and VWs at the end of the day the badge has won. First Parceline, then Fed Ex followed by most others have felt the need to play the mee-too game with running Merc vans. It's a shame because the deals are done by Mercedes themselves and at such ludicrously high discounts to the parcel carriers and the biggest rental firms that Merc dealers cannot sell vans at anything like a reasonable price to end users any more. They are much better off renting! Anyone that did put their money into a Merc Sprinter in the past is getting much less for it secondhand because of over-supply to the rental market. It's a terrible pi** take on the traditional loyal buyer and unforgivable in my opinion. Getting back to the original topic of high PVC prices... It's obvious that none of the discount that the converters get off the base vehicle vehicle get is being passed on. The small converters get less; the big ones get more. Any saving you get from the less greedy small converter is nullified by the higher price they pay for the base. The economies of scale that the big converters have on the installation and the low base vehicle price are not passed on at all and that is where the greatest amount of greed is demonstrated. At the end of the day if you can afford it, and it performs to your expectations and you enjoy the use of it then it would represent value for money. Only you can be the judge. Remember though, as mentioned before, the mechanical bits are from a relatively humble and inexpensive van so don't expect £60,000 worth of refinement, reliability or finish! Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Peter James Posted August 19, 2011 Share Posted August 19, 2011 Another very interesting post Nick, Thank You. euroserv - 2011-08-19 10:51 AM Fiat does not go beyond 4m long and 15m2 (the extra high version is neither use nor ornament to most people). Nick Incidentally, I have only ever seen one extra high (H3) X2/50 van in Britain, plus one converted into an Ambulance at Eyemouth. But saw countless ones in Spain, and quite a lot in France. I don't know why they are so much more popular over there. Every street market in Spain seemed to have several parked nearby. I can only guess they can get away with going over 3.5 tonne and make use of the space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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