With the rocketing increase in living costs, limited availability of manufacturing equipment, and staff shortages, maintaining a fleet is becoming increasingly difficult.

Added to the issues and rising costs, municipal vehicles have also been hit with the change to the red diesel usage in the UK. This affects spreaders, sweepers and grounds maintenance equipment, sometimes doubling the fuel costs when operating these vehicles.

Councils have always embraced alternative ways to deliver their services as economically and environmentally consciously as possible whilst remaining productive. However, the changes to the costs of running the fleets may provide operators and fleet managers a new perspective on old ideas that were previously considered too expensive.

One way to reduce costs is to reduce the fleet size by operating multipurpose vehicles. Single vehicles that have the ability to perform multiple jobs and tasks will reduce the number of vehicles in your fleet, which in turn, significantly reduces maintenance costs. Historically what has prevented these being popular options is the cost of the multi-body systems and the time and expense incurred when changing the body over to perform the alternative functions.

After considering these objections, Bucher Municipal have developed and introduced a new simple swap body system that makes body exchanges a quick, simple and safe procedure. The swap body lift system allows operators to safely switch the required bodies over without the need for a workshop technician.

By investing in these kinds of demount options, not only are costs saved by purchasing just one wheelbase as opposed to a separate sweeper and spreader machine, but significant space is saved in storage areas, maintenance costs are halved, and it is much better for the environment as only one machine has been manufactured.

The CityCat V20 range can be interchangeably equipped with a sweeper hopper, a spreader hopper or a brine sprayer hopper. This is perfect for offering a winter maintenance product to treat cycle lanes and town centre paved areas.

The front of the CityCat V20 sweeper can be equipped with a range of different options; a third brush option allows sweeping on multiple levels, a plough or snow brush to clear snow from cycle paths or pedestrian areas, and a scrubbing deck option which can be used to help remove staining caused by food waste on paved flooring.

The CityCat V20 diesel sweeper is one of the most efficient diesel sweepers available in the market today, with fuel consumption being up to 40% lower than other sweepers in its class. Euro 6c engines are standard, but it can also be offered with a Stage 5 engine to reduce the purchase price. More importantly, this extremely versatile unit can be offered as a fully electric product (CityCat V20e) and can still be equipped with the exchangeable options.

The platform can also be supplied as a washer as either a diesel or an electric product for the councils who wish to flush the streets and improve the air quality.