After our off-road weekend we are heading to Worth am Rein to visit the Mercedes factory where Rosie was made. Our tour is at 10 am in the morning, so we find a nearby motorhome parking lot for the night.
The Mercedes complex in Worth am Rhein is huge! The site was chosen because it has a port on the river, a train station and two major highways on the site’s borders.
Mercedes purchased the site in 1963 and has been building trucks, and only trucks, on this site since that time. The factory can produce up to 470 trucks per day. Each truck has custom options and is built on 1 of 3 assembly lines. No photography is allowed in the plant (only in the visitor entrance).
We were the only two people on the tour, nothing like a private tour!
We toured the cab assembly area, the cab trim installation building, and the chassis assembly lines. The cab assembly area is highly automated (robots everywhere), but the cab trim and chassis assembly lines have a lot of manual (human) labour. Because each truck is customized (no two trucks produced in any given year will have the same options) a lot of manual labour is required.
The logistics behind the “just-in-time” assembly is incredible. Thousands of parts from other Mercedes plants and from third party suppliers must arrive within a specified time window. Trucks are unloaded and robots are constantly whizzing around delivering parts to different areas within the complex. Parts come from as far away as Brazil (a Mercedes plant there makes older style Euro 3 engines – used in trucks for Africa and Central/South America).
Mercedes even has a “truck-in-a-box” assembly line in which all of the parts are packed into cargo boxes for delivery around the world. Some assembly required on delivery – makes Ikea assembly instructions look simple!
A great tour and highly recommended for anyone who is interested in factories and/or Mercedes.
After the factory tour we start heading north towards a small manufacturer called FAS Expedition to get a quote for installing slide out cargo racks and a new cargo box on Rosie’s roof. Along the way we stop at a gas station near Koblenz (still in Germany) for the night (lots of gas stations allow overnight stays for RVs and trucks). We park in the car parking area, but were surprised to find semi-trucks backing in around us.
We had dinner at the gas station’s schnitzel house (the alternative was a Burger King) and to our surprise our Cordon Bleu schnitzel was really good. Truck stops do have good food!
Enough trucks left early in the morning that we were able to squeak Rosie out past them when we wanted to leave!
We had short visit with FAS, they took a bunch of measurements and our requirements and said they would send us some drawings and a price quote.
We are now heading to Calais, where we will get the Chunnel train shuttle to England.
Another night in a truck stop, no schnitzel tonight, but a very quiet and peaceful place to overnight.
Our shuttle leaves early in the morning, so we are spending the night in nearby “Camping Calais La Plage”. Rosie is a big big for the campground and they weren’t busy, so they gave us 4 spots all to ourselves.
The Calais entrance to LeShuttle is a bit confusing, but we finally manage to find the correct line (we had to hop a curb to get around some parked trucks) and we are even early, so we are slotted onto a earlier departure. We have no idea what to expect, other than we are not allowed to drive through the Chunnel, but have to somehow board a train shuttle that takes us to England and then lets us off (not sure how this is going to work).
A bit nerve-racking driving Rosie into, and out of, the train cargo box. Inches, really inches, like only 1-2″ of space for the tires on each side. Rosie drove very very very slowly, but made it on and off the train without incident. Not keen on doing that again, but we have a return trip booked for later in the month (sigh).
We looked into taking Rosie on the commercial freight shuttle (it has and extra 2″ of width), but only commercial trucks with commercial customs documentation are allowed.
No worries, we are back in Merrie Olde England in one piece and heading towards a dog-friendly pub that has real English beer (it may take a few to unwind)!