VOLVO

Volvo - this is a brand name of a slew of products from eponymous company of Sweden. Buses, trucks, construction equipment, earth mover equipment, super safe cars ( this division was sold to Ford Motor Car company four years ago )which are used by several embassies to ferry around their ambassadors. Most of the safety features in cars are pioneered by Volvo over twentieth century- three point seat belt, airbags, reinforcement fenders, anti locking brakes etc.Volvo and Benz are the leading players in buses and trucks worldwide.

Volvo products loaded with features are costly but efficient. The per km per tonne efficiency is the highest for Volvo trucks compared to other Indian alternatives like Tata Motors, Eicher and Ashok Leyland. Volvo trucks take two days for a trip from Mumbai to Delhi compared to three days taken by other trucks.

It has been a long haul for Volvo since they set shop near Bangalore in 1999. Their aim to sell 1000 trucks and buses in due course sounded ambitious. But they proceeded in a systematic manner. They outclassed Tata Motors and BEML in dumpers segment. Volvo set about selling their buses in a systematic manner. The first route they selected for trial was Bangalore - Chennai. Abroad Volvo only builds the chassis for buses and the tractor for trucks ( the front part of the truck which can be detached from the trailer ) but seeing the quality of chassis makers in India, Volvo took a different route. They collaborated with two different parties to roll out fully built tractor- trailers ( this is the proper name for trailer trucks ) and buses to Volvo specification.

Now Volvo buses are plying in various long distance bus routes all over India. You have them on Mumbai -Pune, Pune- Hyderabad, Bangalore- Mumbai, Delhi- Jaipur, Delhi- Jodhpur, Delhi- Chandigarh and other routes. A number of state express road transport corporations are also running Volvo buses on long distance routes.

The concerted effort of Volvo has paid so much so that it has become synonymous with comfortable road travel. The public feels that the higher cost of travel in Volvo buses is justified by the comfort.

Now I am finding normal long distance buses operated by private operators made by Tata Motors and Ashok leyland carrying the name "VOLVO" in bold letters on the rear window panes and on the sides of the bus. This is to indicate that these buses are comfortable for log distance travel and are like "VOLVO" buses. Starting from scratch and becoming synonym for comfortable road travel in India in a matter of a decade - kudos to the management of "VOLVO"

Comments

  1. ROJES V COALBEMay 4, 2010 at 8:46 PM

    The Brand name Volvo has become similar to XEROX..People use the same XEROX and not Photstat/Photocopy..

    ReplyDelete
  2. SubbuMay 4, 2010 at 9:48 PM

    The proper term for Xerox is fascimile.
    Some other brands which have become "verbs" are Surf for detergent, Godrej for steel almyrahs and Dettol for antiseptic solution.
    Public does not say Tide, Steelage and Savlon for the respective product categories.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coconut, the wonder fruit - Nostalgia !

Image
An article in BBC News on line saying coconut is a wonder fruit  has brought up a lump in my throat. As kids, we used to love watching coconut climbers doing their job. I would say they were the early Nadian Comanecans.The global public had to wait till 1976 Montreal Olympics, to get an acrobat exhibit the coordination and aesthetic beauty of coconut tree climbing in the form of Nadia Comaneci. We tried to emulate the free style method of the climbers but ended up with bruise marks on our chests, calf muscles and inner thighs. The higher our freehand climb took us, deeper were the bruises as we used to "give up" in exhaustion and hug the tree dearly to slow down the  fall. The payment for the climbers was partly cash and partly in kind - it was related to the number of trees climbed and not related the yield. So in summer months, the cost per tree comes down as the yield is much more. In the lean months, it was a tug of war between grandma and the climbers as th
Read more

School days

I found the first follower of my blog- Thomas Mailainathan ( Jegharaj ) my school mate as well as my college mate. We studied in Madras Christian College School where I was in Malayala medium in 6th and 7th standard and then shifted to English medium. Thomas M was in English medium through out his school days. We were in different sections. I got to know Thomas M in NCC Airwing in 9th standard. We attended a 10 day camp together. The toilet facility at the camp being bad, we used to eat very little food to avoid nature's call. Water was also in short supply and I took bath only twice during the camp. He won a corporal rank in second year of NCC and became a sergeant in third year. Holding a poorer rank , I ended my NCC stint in thea two years. We spent the five years in College of Engineering in the same section. I had met him on a few occassions in early 80s after graduating from college. He did surface through our batch yahoo group. I got to know him better as a famly man and bre
Read more

At war for cricket

I have worked in private sector all along. I have no idea what it would be to be in a war scene or war like situation. I have seen curfew over en extended period of time in 1985 at Ahmedabad and was literally under house arrest unable to move out of our apartment building in 1992 in Kanpur for three weeks after the Babri Masjid was razed to ground. Those were tense days and they tell me how tense and terrible to be in the midst of war both for armed forces and the civilian population caught in the crossfire. I am getting such a feeling now on the eve and during the one day cricket match between India and South Africa at Jaipur. There has been traffic checks in all important junctins for the last three days. Police forces including reserve battalions are all over the place. The ticket sale has not been too good what with so many level of checks of persons buying the tickets. The process was to be an entirely on line affair but was so slow that some tickets were diverted to over the coun
Read more