Thursday, April 08, 2010

I would like to share with you an experience I had renting the Centaur to one of my customers here in Norway. As you already know, my company Argo Norge has been in business for over ten years selling, servicing and supporting the Centaur and Argo products manufactured by Ontario Drive & Gear Ltd.

Recently, I had an opportunity to rent a Centaur to one of my clients who was preparing an area of land that will eventually be used as a survival training camp. The job consisted of using a very large slow moving tracked drill rig for soil sampling prior to site construction. My client was faced with solving several problems,
a.) The drill rig required water to cool the system, the closest water supply was up to 2 kilometers away.
b.) Travel to and from the water source with the drill rig was not an option as the slow land speed would have prolonged this job.
c.) The drill rig is extremely heavy, routine travel to and from the water source would have had a negative impact on the environment.
d.) The territory does not have any road access, travel to and from the job site is over rough terrain and the work area is surrounded by soft marsh.

To solve these problems and to keep the project on schedule, the project manager decided to rent the new Centaur 8x8 utility vehicle equipped with a water tank. The Centaur routinely traveled the 2 km distance to re-fill the water tank. Due to the dense forest, soft underlay and rough terrain, the Centaur proved to be an indispensable vehicle for this project. Agility, light footprint and power to all eight drive tires were just some of the features my customer appreciated.

Many thanks to ODG for manufacturing such a reliable, easy to use vehicle with such astounding performance. I would now like to share with you some of the comments from my client, his crew and the operators.

"The Centaur proved to be truly indispensable as it hauled water and heavy drilling supplies, some weighing as much as 1,000 kg. Its mobility, even in marshland and up steep hills was almost indescribable".

"In addition to all the regular hauling it did, the Centaur even dragged the 5.5 ton drill rig when it got stuck in the mud"

"One expressed that the only thing this vehicle could not do was 'climb trees. But after four days of use, this also seemed to be a proven ability".

"The work they had planned would normally have taken at least one week, but with the Centaur they were finished in only four days. It functioned without any technical problems, was easy to drive and very economical to operate".

Jan Sverre Nielsen - Argo Norge,
Oslo, Norway