Mercedes-Benz South Africa’s 125 000th truck has rolled off its East London assembly line.

The celebrated vehicle, a Mercedes-Benz Axor 3335, was handed over to Aqua Transport and Plant Hire this week. It will be used as a water tanker and forms part of a bigger order of 165 vehicles by Aqua from the manufacturer.

The first South African assembled Mercedes-Benz truck was put together by the then Car Distributors Assembly (CDA) in East London in 1962.

CDA, the company that would evolve into MBSA, opened its doors in 1948 and was contracted in 1958 by Daimler-Benz to assemble Mercedes-Benz products. Since then, the commercial vehicles division of MBSA has assembled the Unimog, Mercedes-Benz buses, FUSO trucks, Mercedes-Benz trucks and Freightliner trucks.