Text: Juliane Gringer
Photos: Rüdinger
Save 30 percent on fuel and costs, protect the environment, as well as the road surface – and, above all, load 50 percent more than with a standard semitrailer: Rüdinger Spedition has long recognized the potential of the long truck for itself and puts it on the road as often as possible.
Roland Rüdinger points out of his office window onto the yard of his company and asks: “Can you tell me which of these trailers is 13.60 metres long and which is 15 metres? I don’t think you can see the difference. I only recognise it myself by certain tree features that I know we have combined.” The entrepreneur, owner of Rüdinger Spedition from Krautheim in Baden-Württemberg, has one goal: he wants to optimise loading areas. “The more a driver can take with him, the cheaper the transport becomes for our customers,” he explains. Everyday transport is often not standardised – and whenever goods exceed the usual dimensions of a trailer, individual solutions are needed.
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»If you want to save CO2, you should actually demand and promote the long truck.«
Roland Rüdinger, Managing Director of Rüdinger Spedition
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He says he can load 50 percent more onto a type 3 or 5 long truck than a standard semitrailer: “That’s a house number! And if I compare type 1, the long semitrailer, with a jumbo trailer, the former consumes three litres less diesel per 100 kilometres. The operational cost reduction and the improvement of the CO2 balance run parallel here. So there are few rational reasons against the long truck.” One of the few disadvantages of the vehicle, he said, is that many shippers are not yet prepared for the additional capacity. “When you change the market, you have the problem that many players are working with old data,” Rüdinger explains. Where 33 pallets are entered as standard in the systems for a truck, the four additional parking spaces offered by the Type 1 long truck are not recorded. Type 3 and type 5 may also only be used in the Positivnetz – “and the positive network is small”. The remaining scepticism about the long truck is purely political and cannot be justified on technological grounds, explains the entrepreneur: “And anyone who wants to save CO2 should actually demand and promote the long truck.”
