Western Star, a division of Freightliner within DaimlerChrysler South Africa, recently delivered two breakdown/recovery trucks to Van Wetten’s Breakdown Service in Mpumalanga. Van Wetten’s are a well established company in the Mpumalanga community and have been in business since the early 1950s. They currently operate from depots in Nelspruit, Middelburg, Ermelo and Malelane.

Van Wetten’s specialise in all types of vehicle recovery and towing as well as abnormal loads and lowbed work. The company recently took delivery of two Western Star 4964 SA custom-built wrecker trucks fitted with NRC Industries recovery equipment and a Cummings ISX 475 engine producing 500 hp at 1700 rpm. The trucks have been specced with auto-shift transmissions and heavy duty Meritor drive axles, that give the trucks a theoretical gross combination mass (GCM) of 100 tons for pulling stricken vehicles in the hilly areas of Mpumalanga.

The wrecker trucks were custom built to Van Wetten’s specifications with the assistance of the product manager for Western Star, Duncan Prince, to match the needs and requirements of Van Wetten’s operations, which are frequently cross-border and on extremely bad roads.

The trucks were assembled at the Western Star Portland factory located in Portland Oregon in the USA, from where they were transported to NRC Industries in Quebec Canada for fitment of the 35 ton sliding recovery crane and wheel lift. The complete unit was then shipped to South Africa where local modifications were effected by the Western Star dealership, Liebherr Africa, to ensure that the truck complies with SABS specification, and with the South African Road Traffic Act.

“These vehicles represent a major step forward for Van Wetten’s as they are the first vehicles operated by Van Wetten’s that have been built from the ground up as towing/recovery vehicles as opposed to a modified or converted standard truck,” says Duncan Prince.

The Van Wetten’s trucks are the latest to join a growing national fleet of Western Star trucks that are exclusively used for heavy duty recovery and towing operations. “DaimlerChrysler have a five year accumulative history of Western Star vehicles operating in severe conditions in South Africa, and they have all performed brilliantly,” says Prince.

An interesting feature of the Van Wetten’s Western Star trucks is that they are fitted with an Eaton Fuller auto shift transmission, which has a fully automated 18-speed conventional transmission. Prince explains that the advantages of this transmission is that the vehicle is capable of making very quick gear changes while pulling heavy loads on steep inclines, which a driver using a normal manual transmission could never hope to make. He adds, “There is also a safety benefit in that the transmission cannot miss a down-shift, which would normally allow a heavily laden vehicle to get out of control on a steep down hill or pass.”

The trucks are also equipped with heavy-duty cooling systems, radiator mountings, fuel tank and cab mountings especially for use on the extensive dirt roads found in Mpumalanga. Special attention is paid to make as many of the service items on these on/off highway Western Star trucks identical to those used on the Freightliner Argosy highway trucks. This is to ensure a high degree of parts commonality between the two products which means that a Western Star truck can be serviced by any one of the four major Liebherr Africa depots around the country or 16 Freightliner service centre outlets.