Recently OnCourse decided that we would take our responsibility one step further and look at becoming officially Carbon Neutral.

At first glance it all seemed pretty straight forward; we would need an audit doing by a qualified company, which does exist in Uganda.

After the audit we would then know how much carbon we need to offset. The trouble was that we would have to buy carbon credits to do this. This may be through buying credits from tree planting projects that are monitored by the UCB.

But we have 23 Acres of natural forest that every year just keeps growing. It is fenced off so there is very little encroachment. This is our driver training ground. The local wildlife seemed to have moved in as they also feel protected. So you may see the likes of bush buck, red tailed and vervet monkeys, snakes, mongoose and plenty of birds by day. On the night driving sessions we’ve seen serval and civet cats.

We have planted, over the years, a considerable number (well over 4,000) of indigenous trees as well as exotics. And we expect that in 10 years time to be the only section of forest left in our sub-county.

Unfortunately, our own site could not be used to off set our carbon!  We would have to buy credits.  I feel that this is being a little short sited by the companies that provide carbon off sets. We are not a big corporation that is situated in the middle of an industrial site with plenty of money to throw at their conscience. Maybe that’s the problem. As most of the carbon off setters are businesses.

There must be many companies that are in a similar situation to us. That want to go officially neutral but can’t have their own site/facility, which they want to invest in its development, taken into consideration.

So we have decided that this route is not for us. Why buy, as an example only, say 5,000 bucks worth of somebody else’s trees when we could use the money to plant our own on our own land.

So unless something comes up you won’t see OnCourse having an official Carbon Neutral stamp. But you can bet that we’ll continue developing our little patch of tropical forest into not only a haven for the local wild life but into a carbon sink that will easily soak up our own carbon with some to spare hopefully.

When talking of the double cab pick up (dcpu), most of us in this region automatically think of the Toyota Hilux. The first 4×4 double cab version was made available in South Africa in 1984. I’m sure that any 4×4 enthusiast remembers the original leaf sprung model. Its robust reliability spoke for itself. It was a good, strong, simple vehicle. This made it popular with UN and other humanitarian organisations and commercial enterprise. This is the model that the gang on Top Gear tried to kill through various different methods.

It produced a great compromise between a passenger vehicle and a pick up. It became an icon and the most popular choice of bakkie (Afrikaans) in South Africa to the Ute (Utility) in Australia.

It had a tendency to roll over if driven badly and was wrongly blamed for many a death/injury of UN agency and humanitarian staff. In my opinion the vehicle behaved well when driven on unsealed roads correctly.

Rumour has it that Toyota changed the front suspension design to independent after a threat from the UN that it would stop purchasing their vehicles if they did not make them less likely to roll over. Although I would like to think that was true, I think it’s one of those myths that go around. Anyway, the commercial sector has so much more purchasing power than the UN.

The change in design did make the Hilux easier to drive but did have an effect on it’s off-road capability and robustness. The vehicle handled brilliantly on unsealed roads with H4 engaged. This took away the chances of the empty back end swinging around on rough and corrugated roads. Cornering was now a pleasure. There was no over-steer or under-steer to worry about, it was fairly neutral. You felt safe in it as long as you didn’t go too fast of course.

The 4wd Manufacturers

This great compromise led to the majority of 4wd manufacturers coming up with their own versions. All pitting for the same market. Trying to outsell each other with different features. Great for the consumer. But which one to buy has now become something of a debate. Everyone seems to have an opinion on which one is the best. Including me.

Land Rover even came up with one. It was dubbed the Tomb Raider after the one that was used in the film. It didn’t have much success though as with the majority of the Land Rover range these days. It seemed that after decades of development (or not) they still couldn’t make one that didn’t leak and cats could not still escape from when locked inside.

Anyway, the Japanese (purveyors of reliable vehicles with little personality) cornered the market again. Ford has had a pretty good bash at making one with the Ranger but it still is not as popular as its Asian cousin.

So, enter the new Hilux and its fight to keep supremacy in an ever increasingly competitive market. Well, in my view they made a bit of a hash of it. Yes, the low centre of gravity makes it less susceptible to roll over but it lost a lot of its off road capability. In some areas it’s being offered with a lockable rear differential to compensate for this. Also, as with the majority of other double cabin pick ups, it under steers.

Over-steer /Under-steer

With my job I get to drive the majority of 4wd vehicles that are on the market in this region and we do put them through a fairly stringent test as the drivers have to understand the limitations of their own particular vehicles. One of the exercises we do on our High range course, for example, is the slalom (weaving in and out of traffic cones). This doesn’t sound like much fun but come along and do it and you won’t want to stop.

We slowly increase the speed at which the exercise is done and we get to a point where for one reason or another, the driver doesn’t make it through the exercise. One the main factors for the DCPUs not making it are under-steer.

• Under-steer is when the front tyres use up all available traction to steer the vehicle and doesn’t respond to driver steering input.
• Over-steer is when the rear wheels lose all available traction and the back of the vehicle starts to drift to the outside of the corner.

Now, under steer is built into a vehicle as it’s deemed to be easier to control than over steer. All you have to do is decelerate rather than counter steer as well. But why make it under steer so early? I can understand that if you are driving on a tarmac road (have adhesion going on) with all your lane to play with then under steer would be easier to correct. But in this region where 80% of roads are unsealed (no adhesion) which are narrow and lined with, at times, severely negatively cambered shoulders; having a vehicle that under steers early may lead hitting that negative camber before having a chance to decelerate leading to disastrous consequences.

The under steer is there whether the vehicle is in H2 or H4.  Although in my view it’s more apparent in H4 which is a shame as H4 is supposed to give the driver more control in circumstances like this!

It’s a sad day when I can take my old high center of gravity Defender through the slalom at the same speed and not lose control but this is what we get with the majority of DCPUs.

So, which one is the best these days (2009)?

Before I give my opinion let me say that I have been doing some promotional work along side the Nissan dealer here in Uganda and it is having no bearing on my opinion.

• Toyota Hilux – under steers
• Mitsubishi L200 – under steers.
• Ford Ranger – under steers.
• Nissan Hard body J86 – under steers.
• Nissan Navara  – under steers.
• Nissan hard body J83 – great.

There are some that I haven’t mentioned (Wingle Great Wall, I’m not going there!); but I just wanted to cover the most popular ones.  Is it a coincidence that all the under steers are turbo charged engines and have fairly wide tyres (read less tread focus when driving on unsealed roads)?

In my view the J83 model goes back to simplicity, which for this driving environment is ideal. No electric windows or central locking to fail in the field. No flimsy plastic to vibrate loose. A good, reliable normally aspirated diesel engine that still gives adequate performance and relatively good economy. It handles well on and off the tarmac. It has a lockable rear differential to compensate for its lack of off road capability.

But it still is not as popular as it should be and the answer to that it has no bling value. Along side its J86 sister and the Hilux it looks pretty mundane, no personality whatsoever. But if I had to get more bang for my buck and want a simple vehicle for light duty field work this would be my vehicle of choice.

We started off by doing some in house training, free of charge, to our customers who noticed results straight away. The word got out. We got requests from other organizations for training and had to think about where to go from there.

We invested time and considerable resources into developing a capacity to be able to carry out what has turned out to be driver training with a difference. Research had told us that driver training in some quarters was getting negative reviews and it was being said that drivers were coming out the other end of the process with poor driving attitudes = poor driving!

When we first started to carry out training as a service industry, if you like, there was resistance to the rates that we set. Even though they were well on a par with similar types of schools in the more developed countries. There was this view that if the service was available in Africa then it should be cheaper!

We went through a struggle period trying to convince organizations of the benefits of our type of training. Small groups, maximum amount of time hands on and the practical side of the training backing up / reinforcing the theory. As in any service industry … “you get what you pay for” …

Saying that, the struggle has never really disappeared and it’s not likely to. It’s more in the background than it used to be.

This is mainly down to organizations who have taken training with us realizing the benefits in relationship to cost; and investing more in a human resource that, in the end, has control over the security of the human asset and, what is possibly, one of the most expensive physical assets, in the third most dangerous working environment globally; the roads.

The message has then been passed onto the other organizations through our best marketing tool. Our customers.

More and more it seems that organizations are realising that the correct type of driver training does reap rewards even though the initial outlay may seem expensive. And what is more they are going on to making this available to their staff as continuance training. Realizing that safe defensive driving is a life and lifetime skill that has to be continually updated to keep training effective.

We have been up on our soap box for the last ten years shouting out that driver training has to be an integral part of any successful fleet management programme and to have a positive effect on global road safety. And we applaud the organisations out there for bringing this message home.

My only hope is that the level of driver training is not compromised. There is no cheap solution to effective driver training. You can’t learn about driving, driving a desk with 30 others in the jam with you!

A big THANK-YOU to all our customers / students, who have stuck with us and passed on our details, over the last ten years.

We would be on the back roads without you.

Mick.