LNG trucks.

I’ve driven both. The original Mercs weren’t great, but the Volvo FLs at the time were worse and it was those that eventually gave the kiss of death to their use. The new Volvos have been designed to run on LNG, rather than just being adapted, and they are far better. They rev slightly lower in top and change down far more readily when needed - less use of Manual gear on hills. The range might become a bit of an issue. The first one I used said there was an LNG range of nearly 800k on start-up, this dropped to just over 400 k in a matter of miles and then varied wildly throughout the day, not very comforting. They have done Swindon-Heywood and back with a reefer, but I think drivers are wary of doing long runs with a decker yet, at least until they have sorted out the refuelling.

As you say, they sound awful at start-up until they’ve heated up but that only takes a few minutes of idling. The abdlu tank is definitely in a daft place, considering the amount of room to the rear of the diesel tank, and I can see those little doors not lasting long. I reckon they will have issues with the little mid-axle. The reasoning was that the original FLs barely had more than 3 tonne on them at any time so the little ones rating at 4.5 tonne means the front axle could be rated at 8, rather than 7.5. However they’ve found that loading becomes more of an issue when running fully laden, hence not using them for full loads of tiles.

Final little points are that despite the cost of the units they have ommitted some of the odd useful things - no auto headlights or wipers, no levelling button on the dash, back to standard headlights. But they are still nice units to drive.