It has been about three months since UD Trucks first began its marketing activities surrounding the launch of the Croner, a medium-duty truck range designed for emerging markets. However, it was in May that, with the official launch of the vehicle platform in the Middle East, the manufacturer revealed in detail the full scope of vehicle specifications across the range.
Over the course of an evening and morning of proceedings, including a press conference, Japanese-themed dinner for customers and a morning of technical workshops and test drives at Dubai Autodrome, PMV Middle East was finally able to come to an understanding of precisely what the Croner delivers.
And it confirms what UD Trucks has been claiming: that the Croner is a reliable and versatile truck developed with the sincere aim of maximising productivity and uptime.
UD Trucks refers to the Croner not as a truck, but a solution, based on the fact that it is both a range of three trucks with potential variants in terms of engine size, transmission, wheel base, axle capacity and cab type for a total of 21 different configurations.
The Croner essentially comes in three models, the MKE, LKE and PKE, with gross vehicle weights ranging from 10.4t to 18t, with six- or nine-speed transmission and wheelbase lengths from 3,450mm up to 6,500mm.
The range is equipped with UD’s in-house GH5E and GH8E engines (Euro III and Euro IV), with the 10.4t to 11t MKE and 12t to 14t LKE models powered by the former, and the larger 15t to 18t PKE model powered by the latter.
The Euro III versions of these engines provide maximum power ratings of 180HP or 210HP (at 2,200rpm) for the GH5E and 250HP or 280HP (at 2,200rpm) for the GH8E, and deliver maximum torque ratings of 750Nm or 825Nm (at 1,200-1,600rpm) for the GH5E and 950Nm or 1,050Nm (at 1,100-1,700rpm) for the GH8E.
Representing the product in the region is the recently appointed president of UD Trucks Middle East, Mourad Hedna, who notes: “We’ve been here for a long time in the region with the UD brand — for more than 60 years in some countries. So UD has a solid reputation in the region and our trucks are known for their durability and reliability.
“The TZA520 in particular is known as a real workhorse in the region,” he adds, referring to a huge truck parked on display outside of the Autodrome. This gargantuan 6×6 trucks has an eight-cylinder RF8 diesel engine with a piston displacement of 17 litres.
Hedna continues: “UD Trucks understands that more time spent on the road and less time in the workshop drives success for our customers’ businesses. It is our aim for the Croner to make every moment count, by maximising productivity and minimising downtime on every run our customers make.”
In line with this vogue, the Croner is named after the mythological Greek god of time, Cronos, but flexibility forms an equally important part of the medium-duty platform that UD Trucks is delivering to its customers.
Having flown in from Japan, Nobuhiko Kishi, senior VP for the UD brand and product, explains: “UD Trucks is always going the extra mile. It’s our company and brand philosophy, but also that’s why our customer can go the extra mile. UD Trucks is a Japanese truck manufacturer with a very long history, but since it was founded in 1935, the vision of the founder, Kenzo Adachi, has never changed.”
Geared to the gulf
The Croner has been developed to replace the Nissan Diesel Condor, which was first manufactured in Japan in 1975, and later adapted for other markets. The fourth generation was launched in 2010, following the acquisition in 2007 of Nissan Diesel (including the UD brand) by the Volvo Group, as the UD Condor.
With the UD Croner however, UD Trucks and the Volvo Group have taken an entirely different tack. This is a medium-duty vehicle that has been designed, engineered and built with the emerging markets like the Middle East squarely in mind, from the start.
Jacques Michel, president for Volvo Group Trucks Asia, is also present, and he explains: “We are presenting the Croner after three years of engineering and development, and after 30,000 hours of engineering tests on 100 vehicles and 1.7 million engineering hours in all parts of the world.
“The truck has also been run for more than one million kilometres, and we have been running it in the UAE under the radar for a very long time — to make sure that it will work for the customer in this region.”
The Croner is additionally uncompromising on safety, coming with anti-lock brake systems (ABS) and telematics as standard, and air suspension as an advocated option on all variants bound for rough road conditions.
Rewriting the rules
However, UD Trucks is also taking the concept of reliability a step further — in a way that builds on both its claims of high build quality and its comprehensive aftersales proposition — by revealing extended service intervals for the Croner that place it far ahead of the average medium-duty truck in the region.
He notes: “Today, people are conducting services every 5,000km to 10,000km. With the Croner, it will be 25,000km to 40,000km — so we are increasing the service interval by a minimum of 2.5 times. In between, you don’t need to do anything to the truck. And that’s what we mean when we say uptime.”
This promise of an impressive extension of service even in conditions of the Gulf — where temperature fluctuations and atmospheric dust are known to take a toll on mechanics — is part of a broader move by UD Trucks to coax potential customers away from a transactional approach to a solutions approach.
UD Trucks is also keenly advocating the role of its genuine parts and ‘UD Trust’ service agreements from its dealers in optimising the performance and lifespan of its vehicles.
It is the understanding of UD Trucks that the optimised performance and life of its trucks is the compound effect of the vehicle’s high build quality and the impact of the aftersales services provided to its customers.
Hedna explains: “We want the customer to have peace of mind, and to focus on his business, not to maintain the trucks. It also helps us to keep contact with the customer, to share their experience and collect feedback.
“It’s still not very popular to sell service agreements yet. You have big fleets that prefer to deal with that themselves, because they have their own workshop and parts.”
However, even where this is the case, UD Trucks is making efforts to elevate the level of service from its end. Where fleet owners opt out of the service agreements and choose to carry out the maintenance themselves, UD still offers to host a dedicated UD genuine storage unit at the customer’s facility.
Moreover, UD has doubled its warranty from before, as Hedna notes: “It was six months bumper to bumper for the Condor, and 12 months for the engine and drivelines, but the Croner doubles both of those to 12 months bumper to bumper and 24 months for the drive lines, regardless of a service agreement.”
Appointed just six months ago, Hedna’s own role is indicative of the emphasis UD Trucks and the Volvo Group are placing on the region — by establishing a Dubai-based management and operational team for the region. He adds: “We also have an advanced warehouse where we have more than 8,000m2 of storage space and more than 50,000 parts available in stock.”
UD Trucks is also offering training for both its partners and customers through the Volvo Competence Development Centre, whether for sales and aftersales or for driver training.
Hedna comments: Our strategy is to work in collaboration with our partners over the life of the truck, and to be close to our customers — we have a ban on transactional relationships.”
UD Trucks is also expanding its service network in the region. It has recently upgraded its workshops in Riyadh and in Bahrain, and has plans to upgrade its facilities in Qatar, Kuwait and other locations in Saudi Arabia.
Hedna continued: “Our local mindset is inspired by UD’s values: we work with passion and whatever we do, we do fully. We go the extra mile for the customer, and whatever we plan, the customer needs and business are at the centre of our way of working.”
He adds: “If you look to what our customers are asking for in this region, durability is definitely the first priority — they want to rely on the truck, because a truck is not a car; it is a machine — it has to be on the road 24/7.
“The second priority is safety, because more and more people are being asked to pay attention to safety, and the comfort of drivers, because it is difficult to get good drivers in the region who will pay attention to the truck and driver the truck with good fuel efficiency.”
As a final technical point, the range comes equipped with manual six-speed and nine-speed transmissions developed by Volvo and Fastgear, and, in the MKE and LKE models, can also come equipped with Allison 2500 Series six-speed automatic transmissions.
Hedna adds: “With the Croner, the feedback from the customers is that they liked the fuel efficiency, manoeuvrability and capacity of the trucks, while the drivers like the comfort and safety they feel when they are inside the cab.”
For all of the above reasons, Hedna also has high hopes for the truck in Oman, where the requirement for Omani drivers for all vehicles of 12t or below makes driver comfort a priority.
Hedna adds: “It will soon be difficult to find a driver who will be willing to drive every day in a very old, rubbish truck — especially when they have the chance to test modern trucks with air suspension, ABS and modern AC.”
Route to Market
UD and Volvo have several broad strategic reasons for thinking that now is the right time for the launch of the Croner in the region.
Hedna explains: “I believe the medium-duty segment — for short-distance distribution, for light construction and light logistics — will grow here more than in other places, because it is a small segment at present. It’s about how the Gulf’s cities and transport will look tomorrow.
“There will be fleet renewal, and more and more people will pay attention to the running costs as part of the total the cost of ownership, rather than looking at the purchasing price.”
Hedna also points to the fact that the latest Euro III engines are more efficient, as they now use the same base as Euro VI engines — widening the fuel efficiency gap between second-hand trucks and new Euro III vehicles.
With all this in mind, he concludes: “The modernisation of fleets will be more important in the medium-duty segment, so I think this market will grow, and that’s why it’s good to be armed with modern trucks.”
