ERF-Continental:
On Carryfast’s question I point out that when you imagine a diabolo, the upper (funnel) part is the group of Suppliers (■■■■■■■■ Gardner etc, Fuller, David Brown etc, Kirkstall, Hendrickson etc) together with ERF, pushing and pulling for technical solutions in which the suppliers had a major goal to push their new/modified products to gain figures on sold numbers.ERF did quite well to spec (with some options) the NGC next to the other range-participants, three-, four-axles etc. The lower part of the diabolo is the group of importers/distributors and the market represented by the interested transport companies/owner-drivers. We ‘only’ speak
of gross 100 chassis produced/sold (which is quite good for that time-frame) but standard that didn’t suit all end-users on the continent, that’s why earlier remarks were made with the trivial
and controversial outcome: low(er) fuel-consumption versus high(er) speed, what your business requires and then discussions on (excluded) non-spec-warranties could be expected.On the type-approval the importer/distributor should offer each modification (as ERF Ltd. didn’t arrange with possibly very good reasons) to the road-inspection (government-controlled) and for their customers the importer/distributor often applied the former approval (PVA~COC) to serve the customer. ERF was apparently not very keen or happy with that way of working but sales preveals as often.
Let’s get this right.ERF couldn’t provide the options that the customer was asking for because local market type approval restrictions wouldn’t allow it ?.However those options could be provided by local after market suppliers who could get round the type approval restrictions in question ?.No surprise that wasn’t a sustainable business model for ERF and seems to match what I’ve said previously regards type approval issues being a major factor in Brit exporters like ERF having to walk away from that market.Not to mention silly local market demands,regards gearing at least,having made the product effectively useless for sale in the domestic market.Not helped by ERF’s inflexible component options policy in which the thing had to be built to the wrong spec first then changed by the dealer after market.