Peter Bennetto regularly ponders on why he has been so fanatical about vehicle designs in the copper-hauling space.
Will this passion ever fade ?
Beatle lead guitarist George Harrison’s musician son Dhani Harrison is following in his father’s footsteps.
Peter’s parents worked on the Zambian Copperbelt.
As a result he was born in a copper-mine hospital in Nkana, and grew up unquestionably with diesel in his veins and copper deposits in his bones.
A frequent (and only) family evening outing in Nkana, was to take a cruise to the nearby mine dump, to watch the pouring of molten copper slag.
It was that close you could feel the heat through the car window.
“Will we get fried if we open the window ?”
This was his early Universe.
Exciting stuff.
So when Peter, now as an adult, was asked by Trafigura to design a prototype dual-haul diesel-and-copper hauling vehicle in 2015, it was more of a back-to-his-roots quest for him, than a commercial quest.
Trafigura’s brief was to : supply dual-haul diesel-copper hauling vehicles at a ‘price point’ of USD 50 000 (landed) Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; which price was identical to standard fuel tankers manufactured in Tanzania at that time.
This was : ‘trying to defy gravity.’
Dual-haul vehicles, in needing to cater for two very different types of cargo, needed more material; and attracted more cost, so the Trafigura brief put the vehicle under serious cost pressure.
The call was made to manufacture in China, and fit steel tanks.
Like all prototypes, the vehicle design for Trafigura taught Peter and others a lot.
Much of this prototype – and the road-testing thereof – has informed all later dual-haul designs, including CoppaHauler in 2025, which is the seriously-proper progeny of the Trafigura prototype.
As each year goes by, there are increasing numbers of diesel tankers hauling copper.
But a huge percentage of flatbeds and fuel tankers are not yet ‘matched.’
Operators are not yet getting the commercial benefits of replacing two trucks and trailers combinations with one; replacing two drivers with one; cutting operating expenses (diesel; tyres; vehicle maintenance; licencing) in half.
Why is this ?
Perhaps the dual-haul vehicles to date have not been optimized, and needed time to evolve.
Henry Ford did not design the Ford Mustang.
loaded copper trucks and empty fuel tankers heading south on identical routes