A Renault Trucks C520 10x4 lightweight construction site taxi for La Fresa/Reproad AG

Apart from the bright purple metallisé and the flat loading bridge, the five-axle Renault Trucks C520 40-tonne truck does not immediately show that it is a very special, if not unique, truck in Switzerland.

The customer

The company La Fresa/Reproad AG, based in Sennwald SG, which specialises in the "fast and efficient removal of concrete and asphalt layers", needed a suitable transport vehicle for its milling machines, which weigh several tons. It was supposed to be a Renault truck, ordered from Renault Trucks Garage J. Eberle AG in Buchs SG, which is only about ten kilometers away from La Fresa. "We have been driving very well with Renault Trucks for almost 30 years," said Markus Lampert, site manager and technical advisor at La Fresa. "We acquired our first Renault truck back in 1995." In addition to the quality of Renault Trucks, the proximity to the garage is particularly important for the procurement. "We have a lot of night and weekend assignments and we need a reliable partner who is available 24/7. And that's what we found with Garage J. Eberle AG. By the way, I drove a Renault Trucks Magnum myself for a long time, with which I felt very comfortable." According to Lampert, the drivers at La Fresa are also very satisfied with the Renault trucks.

Commenting on the special feature of the new vehicle with inventory number 105, incidentally the twelfth Renault truck in La Fresa's fleet, Lampert explained: "As early as 20 years ago, Erich Elkuch, the former managing director of La Fresa and long-standing customer of Garage J. Eberle AG, designed the loading bridges himself and designed them to meet the needs of the company." He was the first to transport heavy paving cutters on solo vehicles instead of low-profile trailers.

The Bachelor Thesis

"About four years ago, Markus Lampert from La Fresa approached us after receiving rejections from most of the suppliers and asked whether we could design a suitable structure," explained junior manager Janin Eberle, who at the time was still studying at the Automotive and Vehicle Technology BFH in Biel. His area of expertise: "Automotive technology with a specialization in vehicle construction". His bachelor thesis dealt with the development and construction of this special steel bridge with special requirements for lightweight construction to save weight and gain payload at the same time. The bridge, including the subframe, had to withstand high point loads, for example due to the short tracks or the hard rubber wheels of the milling machines, and at the same time guarantee the overall vehicle height and the permissible total weight of the truck without reducing the stability of the vehicle.

The material for lightweight construction: fine-grained structural steel and aluminium with a high quality class. "The load-bearing elements and the steel assembly could be designed to be correspondingly thinner." The prerequisite: "Calculation using the finite element method" (FEM) with a computer.

In the end, the bridge was constructed by the company UT Umwelt- und Transporttechnik AG, where a welding table was specially manufactured for the product. Subsequently, UT-Ruggell and Garage J. Eberle built the bridge on the chassis and presented it to the public at the end of September at the 30th anniversary.

The Vehicle

With an overall length of the Renault Trucks C520 10x4 of 11.2 metres, the bridge measures 7.4 metres in the flat surface and the loading height is only 1.1 metres. The 3.1-metre-long ramps made of milled aluminium profiles are movable and moved electro-hydraulically. "The subframe is equally stable and load-bearing throughout," emphasizes Janin Eberle. The manoeuvrable five-axle vehicle with a wheelbase of 5.1 metres and a steered 10-tonne trailing axle offers a payload of 25.42 tonnes. "That's about how much our heaviest milling machines weigh," Markus Lampert confirmed. The Renault Trucks C520 10x4 has a DTi13 engine with 534 hp of power and 2550 Nm of torque, as well as a 13-speed automated gearbox with crawler and a retarder with high braking power.

Die Firma The Strawberry

Two stylized white wild boars are the trademark of the company La Fresa (Italian: The Milling Machine): "Wild boars are strong and tear up the ground. Just like the milling machines," said Markus Lampert, explaining the white wild boar silhouettes on the cab flanks of the new Renault Truck C520. In 2015, La Fresa Erich Elkuch GmbH was taken over by Reproad, which is active in road and industrial floor construction throughout Switzerland. In 2021, the St. Gallen-based company Remora AG was added and merged with La Fresa. The La Fresa brand has been retained in the milling company Reproad.

Pictures

La_Fresa_01: from left to right: Erich Elkuch (former Managing Director of La Fresa), Janin Eberle (Junior Manager Renault Trucks Garage J. Eberle AG), Michael Keller (Machinery Manager Reproad AG), Markus Lampert (Remora AG/La Fresa), Rudi Bernegger (Workshop Manager at Remora AG/La Fresa), Joachim Eberle (Senior Manager Garage J. Eberle AG).

La_Fresa_02: Erich Elkuch, Michael Keller, Markus Lampert, Janin Eberle, Reinhard Beck, Joachim Eberle, Torsten Witter, Urs Weder, Alexandru Cojocaru, Martin Dallasera.

Further information:

renault-trucks.ch

Roman Sievi

Phone: +41 (0) 44 746 65 60

roman.sievi@renault-trucks.com