Fife Creamery, distributor of food products across Scotland, has announced the purchase of  30 new Canter 7.5-tonners from Ciceley Commercials, alongside two 18-tonne Mercedes-Benz Actros. As it continues to expand into frozen food services following a £1.65 million investment, the distributor decided to strengthen its fleet.

Already on the road, the vehicles are being used to deliver chilled, frozen and speciality ambient products to a broad customer base, from independent sandwich bars and butcher’s shops to large retail chains and restaurants and hotels. The FUSO Canter is great for such deliveries, as it comes with a big payload allowance, compact dimensions that make it suitable for towns and city centres, as well as fuel-efficiency.

“The Canter is not a long-haul truck but it’s excellent for the kind of intensive delivery work that we undertake in busy urban centres such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen,” said Logistics Manager, Richard Wishart. “Despite the fridge body, and with a driver and full tanks of fuel and AdBlue also factored in, ours will still take a 3.0-tonne payload – that’s almost a tonne more than you’d get on a conventional 7.5-tonner. At 18 miles per gallon, the Canter is also comfortably ahead in terms of fuel economy, and this contributes to its overall cost-effectiveness.”

“We work these vehicles hard,” he continued. “Each will typically clock-up 70,000 miles a year, so the fact that the Canter is backed by Mercedes-Benz, and we can get a full five years’ warranty cover, is another important plus.”

Moreover, the new Canters come with a redesigned cab which includes improved driver comfort and insulation to reduce in-cab noise and reinforced rear underrun protection to minimise the impact in the event of an accident. A newly developed, compact exhaust system means the new model also meets the EURO VI – STEP E emission standard.

The fleet also includes five 18-tonne Actros, with a fifth recently added to the fleet as part of the same order and a sixth 18 tonner Actros on order. These pull drawbar trailers and are allocated to more distant runs, or those involving high volumes.

As 7C18 variants, Fife Creamery’s trucks employ 3.0-litre common-rail powerplants that generate range-topping outputs of 129 kW (175 hp) and up to 430 Nm of torque, and drive through smooth-shifting DUONIC dual-clutch automated manual transmissions with Eco Mode, Parking and Creep functions.