Just how big is the Mercedes-Benz truck manufacturing plant?

The sheer scale of the Mercedes-Benz factory in Worth, in the Rhineland in the South of Germany is mind boggling.

The factory started production in 1963 and has grown over the years into one of the biggest truck factories in the world. Mercedes-Benz won’t claim this factory to be the biggest in the world simply because they don’t know what the Chinese have.

So, in their usual self-deprecating way, simply say ‘it’s one of the biggest’.

The whole site, including the factories covers an area equal to more than 300 football fields. The area of the truck factory itself is 2.9 million square metres. Of particular note is the A-Series building where the bulk of the trucks are made – think Arocs, Atego, and Actros – is one kilometre long and 200 metres wide.

Then there is a smaller (or should we say less humungous) building called the Special Vehicles Building where trucks like the Unimog, Econic and Zetros are built. That’s around 200 metres by 200 metres.

There is also a separate factory which produces the CKD (completely knocked down) kits for other factories around the word. These kits are transported to other countries and reassembled into trucks for other markets. To date over 750,000 CKD kits have been exported from Worth.

In total, around 4.4 million trucks have been produced at the Worth factory.

Adjacent to the factory is the testing centre where all manner of testing can be done virtually all conditions can be replicated, with the exception of winter testing which is done in Sweden as “it doesn’t get cold enough in Worth”. Here, there are 27 kilometres of test tracks.

Of course, all this needs to be powered and we were told that 40 per cent of the energy used by the plant is produced on site. This is through a combination of a vast array of solar panels and the company’s own gas-fired power station. Yep, they even have a power station which can be seen in the aerial shot sporting a chimney.

The factory supports a huge local economy with 11,000 people being employed over two shifts. But they’re not all local. We were told that 30 per cent of the workforce comes from over the border in France.

And they need to be fed so there subsidised canteen is on site that produces up to 7000 meals a day.

Touring the factory we found that certain sections, like the cab manufacturing section is abuzz with robots flipping, turning and spitting sparks as they produce all manner of cabs of different shapes and sizes on the one line.

At the painting station we were told that there are up to 450 different paint colours on offer so customers can have customised colours for their cabs direct from the factory. It’s also interesting to note that when a cab leaves the paint area, it weighs 20kg more than when it entered.

Other parts of the factory, like where the cabs are fitted out are more labour intensive but still, little autonomous trolleys zip around ferrying components to the workers who fit the components with amazing alacrity.

Then there’s the chassis line where the chassis are painted, flipped over and fitted with an engine and gearbox in eight minutes. The chassis run down their line which is parallel to the cab line where, at the end, they are ‘married’ to the cabs and the truck takes shape.

It’s a perfectly orchestrated dance that eventually spits out 300 Mercedes-Benz trucks every day, although at peak production it can produce in excess of 450 trucks per day.

The Mercedes-Benz truck factory is really one of the most impressive factories you’ll ever see, and the public can book in for on one of the company’s impressive tours on weekdays. More info is available here.