Hey, all. It's Steven here again. That's right – two weeks in a row! Can you believe it? It's like I'm the one writing this blog now, or something...
No, not really. If you were here last week, you may remember me mentioning I had asked Aunt Gertie to let me write a guest post later in the month. And, well, this is it. After today, I'm going to leave this blog to the person who actually runs it and you'll all get to have fun with Aunt Gertie once again.
Ford's New E-Van
In the meantime, though, let's talk about a really exciting thing one of my mates told me about. He works for a big German delivery company (no names, but their main branding colour is yellow, if you know what I mean) and he said they'd teamed up with Ford to create a new van, specifically to meet their requirements. Now, here's the thing – according to what he told me, this could actually have a huge impact on the courier industry as a whole - especially for those of us who do owner driver jobs for a living. Want to know why? Read on and find out.
An Electric Courier Vehicle
This van, which is called the StreetScooter, is one of the first electric courier vehicles out there, which straight away means it is more affordable to own and run. Just that aspect means it's already beneficial for drivers doing owner driver jobs, because, let's face it, a lot of our overheads are on petrol. An electric van would mean more money in our pockets - and you can't tell me that's a bad thing!
Not only that, this little van can help save CO2 – you know, carbon dioxide? That thing we all need to be able to breathe? Yeah, it saves that too. So, two for two, I guess.
"But Steve," you say. "That's worth nowt if the van is tiny!" But here's the thing – it's not. It's really not. It has 20 cubic litres of storage – that's good for over 20 parcels! It can also go anywhere from 80km to 200km on just one battery charge, depending on how hard you run it – which is also not half-shabby for something that runs on an electric motor.
So now that you know all this, it's not hard to see why I was so excited when I heard about this van, is it? This thing could really have an impact on our owner driver jobs, and I really hope Ford decides to mass produce them and give drivers access to it - even if we don't work for the yellow company. As soon as that happens, I know I'm getting one!
- Steve