In it for the long-haul

“There are plenty of pick-up trucks on the market, but not many have the towing specification of the ISUZU!” That’s the opinion of Brian Morgan, Director of Ludlow-based Morspread Ltd., a specialist contractor who’s company provides deep litter spreading services to the broiler, turkey and poultry fattening industry. His company fulfils his contract customer requirements between livestock batches, completely spreading all kinds of fresh, farmer sourced litter to production sheds, prior to the re-establishment of chicks and poults.

Specialist compact tractors such as John Deere 3320s, 2520s and 1227Rs are fitted with mounted or trailed ‘scoopy-bins’ that are self-loading and are used to spread the litter, usually every 8-10 weeks.

Said Bryan, “Our customers don’t really want to invest large amounts of money in new equipment for spreading litter because that can be very expensive. So we maintain the equipment and provide that service all around the country on a planned basis and our customers are happy with our efficiency. However, towing trailers with equipment of up to three and a half tonne to all points around the country means we have to have the right transport vehicles.”

Bryan and his team of eight staff use an ISUZU blade pick-up truck - it won the Pick-up Truck of the Year award, two year’s running. Morspread Ltd, purchased their third one recently from their local ISUZU dealer, Tallis Amos Group (TAG) in Leominster, taking delivery of a new ISUZU Blade D-Max in September 2015.

“The last ISUZU we had, said Bryan, “did three years without a spanner being laid on it and it even had the original set of tyres after just over forty thousand miles. This is the third one we’ve had and they’ve proven to be reliable, frugal on fuel and very comfortable. We tow sixteen foot Brian James trailers and never have a problem towing to maximum weight, they run sweet enough.”

Bryan’s ISUZU Blade D-Max comes complete with Sat-Nav, Blue-Tooth, four comfortable seats and an impressive fuel consumption figure of around 25 mpg, even when towing a fully-laden trailer. It’s powered by a 2.5 litre, twin-turbo diesel engine with bags of torque and quiet performance.

“My local ISUZU dealer is TAG in Leominster and they have got a great team of people providing back-up, said Bryan. “If I have a problem at all, I just drop it in to TAG, they sort it quickly and allow me to get on my way. Downtime on a delivery means it eats into your earnings and I can’t afford to have that happen, I don’t want to let my customers down. If TAG don’t have the part in stock, they can have it for me by breakfast in the morning - now that’s what I call service.”

“When we were looking at a new pick-up truck, there was very little available on the market at this specification, commented Bryan, “and there aren’t many pick-up truck dealers who understand the needs of a rural business. With TAG, they seem to understand my needs and they have a great team of certified technicians working for them. As far as the ISUZU and TAG are concerned, they perform precisely to my needs and ‘do exactly what is says on the tin.” he concluded.