A sentimental (old truck journey

Gottlieb Daimler (far left) puts his new invention, the petrol-engined truck, on show in Paris in 1898. This five-tonner is the second evolution of the Daimler truck

AIMLER TRUCK HAS SENT A CURRENT MODEL

Mercedes-Benz Actros from Germany to England….on a sentimental journey. On board the Actros were two historic trucks – the first an accurate replica of the world’s first motorised truck, built by Gottfried Daimler and launched on August 18, 1896.

Exactly 125 years later the Actros arrived in London from Stuttgart – ready for a British roadshow marking its anniversary.

As Daimler Truck pointed it, it also just happened to be the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Actros model itself. So, a double celebration.

No…a triple: The other historic truck on board the Actros on its trip to London – also for the roadshow – was an original 1898 Daimler. Back in the day (ie 123 years ago!), this was a notable evolution in the development of the truck.

Gottlieb Daimler’s first truck, from 1896, was (unashamedly and unsurprisingly) based on a horse-drawn carriage – minus the drawbar and fitted with a four-horsepower, two-cylinder Phoenix engine. It was sold by Daimler to British Motor Syndicate, an automobile company in London.

The rear-mounted 1.06-litre engine, originating from a car, was linked to the rear axle by a belt. The engine had to be mounted on springs to avoid it being shaken up. As Daimler Truck explains: “The vehicle rolled on hard iron wheels, after all.”

It says one of Herr Daimler’s greatest talents “was finding new areas of application for his engine. He invented the motorcycle, then went to the motorised trolley car, a motorised firefighting hose and then, almost inevitably, to the truck…”

Daimler steered the leaf-sprung front axle via a chain: The driver sat up front on the driving seat – as you would on a horse-drawn carriage.

The fuel consumption was approximately six litres of petrol per 100 kilometres. In the terminology of the day, that was “0.4 kilogrammes per horsepower and hour”.

Adds Daimler Truck: “It is noteworthy that the first truck already anticipated.....the planetary axles that are still common today in construction vehicles: Because the belt drive sent the power from the engine to a shaft fitted transversely to the longitudinal axis of the vehicle – both ends of which were fitted with a pinion. Each tooth of this pinion meshed with the internal teeth of a ring gear which was firmly connected with the wheel to be driven.”

The genuine 1898 Daimler on that recent trip to the United

Above: The new MercedesBenz Actros arrives to pick up the two pieces of Daimler Truck history – the genuine 1898 Daimler (left) and a replica of Gottlieb Daimler’s first truck Right: The 1896 truck’s outer planetary axle Far right: The Phoenix petrol engine designed by Maybach didn’t need much modification to suit it to the first truck

Kingdom was an example of the second model developed by Gottfried Daimler – he and Wilhelm Maybach deciding to shift the two-cylinder, 6hp Phoenix engine from the rear to a new location under the driver’s seat, with a four-gear belt drive also transferred to the front.

As Daimler historians note, “this solution still left a certain amount to be desired.” So, later in 1896, “the truck was given the design features which still apply up to this day for modern trucks – and were to pave the way to increased output and payload: The engine was then placed right at the front” – ahead of the front axle.

“It conveyed its 10hp via a four-gear belt drive and a front-to-rear longitudinal shaft and pinion to the internal ring gears on the iron wheels at the rear.

“For these vehicles, Daimler made the crucial improvement not only to the drivetrain, but to the engine itself. Instead of a hot tube ignition, the new low-voltage magnetic ignition from Bosch ignited the petrol-air mixture in the cylinders of the 2.2-litre two-cylinder engine. And the radiator had a completely new design.

However, Gottlieb Daimler – probably because of the large number of innovations – was initially cautious about presenting this new fivetonner to the market.

As a result: “The vehicle, which was highly modern at the time, underwent ‘customer testing’ for months.” Daimler subjected it to the daily grind of work at a brick factory in Heidenheim – painstakingly remedying each shortcoming that was revealed.

The company had gone international with its truck invention very early on: England, the home of industrialisation, bought that very first truck, for instance.

There the Daimler truck shared the road not only with horse-drawn carriages, but also the steam-driven vehicles that had long since made the shift from rails to the roads (and, in fact, didn’t completely disappear from the roads until the 1950s).

Nevertheless, says Daimler Truck, in 1901 a diesel truck proved itself to be superior to a contemporary steam-driven wagon in a comparison test carried out in Liverpool.

But these Daimler contraptions made their mark in France too. Gottlieb Daimler travelled to Paris in mid-1898 to publicise his new product at the World Exhibition. There, an automobile show was held in the Tuileries Park, following a contest organised by the Automobile Association of France on the subject of “motorised vehicles for city travel.”

At the exhibition, Daimler presented his new five-tonner: “Huge crowds of people, many vehicles of all kinds and our truck are very popular,” Daimler’s wife Lina noted happily.

In the United States, Gottlieb Daimler also had a partnership with William Steinway, of the piano manufacturers, Steinway & Sons – the New York-based company selling Daimler engines for yachts and launches as well as for commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks.

But the path to global success with his invention wasn’t without

its pitfalls and problems: In 1897, behind the company founder’s back, the board chairman of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) sealed a deal with Berlin-Marienfelde company Ad. Altmann & Co. to build motorised vehicles…based on Daimler’s latest designs and patents.

Production of those vehicles began in Berlin in 1899, creating stiff competition for Daimler’s own vehicles, made in Stuttgart. Cars with electric motors based on patents of the American manufacturer Columbia were included in the range, as were carriage-like passenger cars and a wide variety of commercial vehicles.

After the death of Gottlieb Daimler in 1900, the DMG shareholders voted to take over the company located in Berlin-Marienfelde. The now much larger business was divided into two car plants in Stuttgart, with truck and bus manufacturing carried out at the BerlinMarienfelde factory.

The second generation of Daimler trucks, manufactured from 1899 to 1903, consisted of new models with a payload of between 1.25 and five tonnes, with 4hp to 12hp two-cylinder and four-cylinder engines.

In 1905 the DMG range comprised light vans with 500kg, 1000kg or 1500kg payload capabilities, powered by two-cylinder engines with 8hp to 16hp. The heavy-duty van class offered 2-5t payloads and had four-cylinder engines with 16-35hp.

Says Daimler Truck: “In 1900, Karl Benz took the plunge – progressing from the van to the real truck. The first range consisted of three models: The lightest version (1250kg payload) was powered by a 5-7hp one-cylinder engine, the medium-duty version, for a 2.5t payload, a 10hp one-cylinder engine….

And the heavy-duty model, for a 5t payload, had a two-cylinder Contra 14hp engine.

What all three had in common was that the engine was no longer in the rear, but at the front, and positioned horizontally, and it drove the rear axle via a four-gear transmission and chain.

As Daimler says, the basis for the truck was now in place: “The Industrial Revolution picked up speed and mass-produced goods came on the markets. The demand for distribution haulage grew.

“The history of road transport and the history of trade and roadbuilding are more closely linked than generally thought.”

Daimler is also now closing in on the 100-year anniversary of Karl Benz’s launch of the world’s first air-injection diesel.

In 1923, his Benz & Cie. presented the first diesel truck to the world. It was a five-tonner, powered by the four-cylinder OB 2 diesel engine with an output of 33kW/45hp at 1000rpm.

Compared to a petrol-driven truck of the same design, the efficiency of the diesel truck was immediately impressive – the diesel achieving fuel savings of 86%.

Work on the new truck engine began in 1922 and 10 OB 2 engines were ready for testing later that year.

Daimler Truck says: “The first test drive was carried out in a challenging, hilly area around Gaggenau… The engineer’s report

Clockwise, from top left: Daimler’s new front-engined model, created in 1898....Daimler (on the far right) with his truck in Paris....The first Daimler, with the engine installed at the rear....a new-generation Daimler in 1904....in England, the Daimler inventions competed with steam-powered trucks, which continued to have a presence on UK roads till well into the 20th Century

assessed the vehicle: “The favourable consumption is particularly impressive. Supplied with brown coal tar oil, the OB 2 requires around 25% less than a petrol engine with the same power.”

The sensationally low fuel costs were due to the fact that the tar oil was cheaper than the petrol. And in addition to the tar oil, the new engine could also be “driven with gas oil, kerosene, Texas oil and yellow or brown paraffin oil,” as Benz & Cie advertised in 1923.

The Benz engineers installed the diesel in the chassis of the Benz 5 K3 truck, designed for 5t payload. During the test drives, the OB 2 diesel proved itself – and in early 1923 it was decided to go into series production. The prechamber OB 2 diesel engine was capable of an output of 37kW/50hp at 1000rpm.

Meantime, since 1911, Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft had begun development of a compact diesel engine for commercial and agricultural use. While Benz & Cie. was developing the diesel truck, DMG was building an air-injection diesel engine to be fitted in a truck, boasting almost the same power.

The finished product was a four-cylinder engine with an output of 29kW/40hp at 1000rpm. The engine proved its road capability during a series of test drives – also in 1923. A Daimler truck powered by the diesel engine did a return drive between DMG plants in Berlin and Stuttgart (around 1300 kilometres) in 10 days in September 1923 – creating a sensation.

The tests drew huge publicity due to the “enormous distances,” and on the back of that the first Daimler 5 C commercial diesel vehicles produced in Marienfelde – a truck, a three-sided tipper and a bus – were presented in October ‘23 at the Berlin automobile exhibition.

In 1926 DMG and Benz & Cie. merged – and Benz’s prechamber principle prevailed against the air-injection diesel engine. The first

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jointly-developed prechamber diesel engine was the six-cylinder OM 5 engine from 1927 (55kW/75hp with a displacement of 8.6 litres).

The Mercedes-Benz L5 truck was fitted with either the new OM 5 diesel engine or a petrol engine, type M36 (74kW/100hp at 2000rpm). The five-tonner was the only model with a diesel engine included in the new Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicle range in 1927.

The 1.5t and 3.5t vehicles were initially only available with petrol engines – a sign of M-B’s concern at customers’ “great scepticism of the diesel engine.”

The OM 5 that went into series production in 1928 was fitted with a new Bosch injection pump, which Robert Bosch had been working on for six years. In 1924 he’d been an early buyer of a diesel truck from Benz & Cie. and was convinced of the diesel engine’s superiority.

The improvement brought by the systematically developed injection technology contributed to the acceptance of the diesel, says Daimler Truck.

Initially sales were very slow because opponents of the new truck design criticised the diesel’s “loud and harsh running.”

But, just as it had 40 been years earlier, England was positive about the new German technology.

In June 1928 a 5t diesel truck was delivered to British MercedesBenz Ltd. Specialist magazine Commercial Motors praised the characteristics of the truck in five consecutive issues. Then in the autumn of 1928, the Royal English Automobile Club awarded DaimlerBenz AG the Dewar Trophy, which was presented annually for special performances in the field of motor vehicle construction.

It was another important step in the history of the company that is now the world’s largest truck manufacturer. T&D

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Left to right: The two historic Daimlers now on tour in the UK....the Benz OB 2 engine – said to be the world’s first diesel....the Mercedes-Benz Type 5 K3, with the OB 2 engine installed