Mercedes-Benz Trucks: Showing what working vehicles can do

A new truck joining a fleet isn’t always front-page news. But put that truck on a 1,400-mile electric rally, send it from John O’Groats to Land’s End, use it to carry Formula One cars across Europe or help stage a major concert without a diesel generator in sight, and suddenly there’s rather more to talk about than who bought it and how many axles it has.

loop ran the Mercedes-Benz Trucks UK press office, finding the bigger stories inside a business built around vehicles designed to work hard for a living.

That meant introducing the eActros 600 as much more than another new model. We helped show what long-distance electric trucking looked like in the real world: fully freighted, working to proper schedules and covering the same demanding routes operators face every day.

For the EV Rally, the truck travelled 1,400 miles around Britain over five days, visiting locations from A to Z and proving that an electric tractor unit could cope with considerably more than a short demonstration lap. Capturing the story properly sometimes required unusual levels of commitment, including finding the right vantage points and hanging off bridges as the truck passed through. There are easier ways to take a photograph, but few that make a 40-tonne electric truck look quite as convincing.

The eActros later became the first electric HGV to travel from John O’Groats to Land’s End in just over 24 hours. It transported Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One cars to the Dutch Grand Prix, carried stage equipment for Sam Fender’s first all-electric UK and Ireland tour and helped Massive Attack perform a headline set powered entirely by batteries at East London’s LIDO Festival. Three eActros 600s formed the logistical backbone of the event, replacing diesel trucks as the lighting, sound and stage equipment ran without the generators traditionally rumbling away behind the scenes.

Each project gave us a different way to make electric trucking tangible. Range became a journey rather than a number in a specification table. Charging became part of a working schedule. Carbon savings could be measured against a real job completed, not simply promised for some distant point in the future.

There was plenty happening away from electric long-haul, too. We told stories about Unimogs reaching places conventional vehicles couldn’t, gritters keeping roads open, recovery trucks built to haul almost anything and an Arocs decorated with thousands of poppies to support the Royal British Legion.

And yes, sometimes the news really was that somebody had bought a truck.

Even then, the interesting part was rarely the handover photograph. It was the reason behind the choice: the unusual load, the punishing route, the driver who would live in the cab all week or the family business investing in its next chapter. We found that story and made the vehicle part of it.

From electric endurance runs and major launches to specialist conversions and everyday fleet arrivals, loop helped Mercedes-Benz Trucks show that working vehicles create stories wherever the road takes them.

You just have to be prepared to follow – occasionally from the side of a bridge.