Daimler rejigs truck business

In the first week of July, Daimler Trucks announced that it had transferred the marketing, sales, and service of its Actros vehicles in India from Mercedes-Benz India (MBIL) to Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV).

While a consolidation was in the works for almost a year, what it would actually involve has only now become clear. The entire Actros team that was based in Pune since the start of the business in June 2006 has been moved to Chennai, while the assembly of the Actros cab-and-chassis stays at the dedicated facility in Chakan — for the time being at least.

As the sole face of Daimler Trucks in India, DICV gets to address the “entire” Indian truck market — both the volume and premium segments, Daimler India’s DGM (marketing communications) Capt. J Shankar Srinivas told Autocar Professional. “If and when we see opportunities for other products from the Daimler Trucks portfolio in India, DICV will handle such products as well.”

The “huge potential” of the Actros would best be fulfilled with an infrastructure and network of the scale that DICV plans to set up, MBIL spokesman Manas Dewan added. His company sold 230 Actros tippers in 2009 and expects to exceed that number in 2010, having sold 104 till May, he added.

While MBIL continues to assemble the Actros, it will also build out its bus portfolio. By the third quarter of 2011 it will start to build city buses on O 500 U 1726 chassis imported knocked down from Brazil at a new facility to be set up together with Daimler’s Egyptian affiliate MCV adjacent to the commercial vehicle assembly hall.

The company also plans to bring construction of the two- and three-axle coaches in-house following a series of bitter experiences with its present coach-building partner Sutlej in Jallandhar, Autocar Professional learns.

The first Mercedes-Benz MCV C120 standard-floor bus and C120 LE low-floor bus went into a fortnight of trial operation with the Pune Metropolitan Transport Corporation at the beginning of July, and MBIL will take the vehicles to other cities in the course of the next few months. This is in order to determine a slate of specifications that meet the requirements of transport undertakings in those cities.