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being selected to exclusively participate in English platooning trials in 2017.
The make has long since gone global. These days, DAF trucks are manufactured in the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and Brazil, and DAF products are sold by 1100 independent dealers on five continents.
“DAF provides a complete range of excellent trucks that offer the industry’s lowest operating costs, best transport efficiency and highest driver comfort,” reckons DAF president Preston Feight.
“Thanks to the wonderful team of over 10,000 dedicated people who design, build, sell and support its quality trucks, engines, parts and services, DAF is well positioned to continue growing
successfully around the world.”
The way Richard Smart sees it, in the NZ setting DAF has “got
the best of both worlds: It’s got the European high spec and safety features and comfort factor, but we’ve also got a factory that’s really switched on to the fact that this is a different part of the world.
“They sell trucks to 47 export markets – and they make a different truck for each one. You don’t get a European photocopy – you get all the strange things that we need, that they don’t have in any other country. They build us unique model codes, they build us Meritor suspension, Roadranger transmission – all the bits we need to make the product stand up to NZ conditions.”
It is, he reckons, DAF’s point of difference with its Euro rivals
e 2600, launched in the early 1960s, was purposebuilt for trans-Continental transport – with two bunks and windows all around for a spacious feeling
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In 1950 the DAF factory began building this T60 model with its own cab. Until then the trucks had left the factory as rolling chassis – with cabs custom- made by local bodybuilders