Safe Transport Without Packing
Page 47
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The weight of the body with all accessories, but without the bottom floor, is 24 cwt. It is estimated that had timber been used, the semi-trailer would have weighed about a third as much again and would not have been as easy to build or as strong.
The vehicle had to be designed to
• carry 60 washing machines of two different types, using no packaging materials yet ensuring that each unit would suffer no damage. A BedfordScarnmell unit was selected, the semitrailer having steel side raves and a wooden floor. The main bodywork is constructed of Noral extruded top-hat section, cross7braeed to support the unper deck and panelled with Noral aluminium sheet.
Tracks for Loading The upper deck takes the form of a series of panels, built of extruded flooring sections, hinged to angles bolted horizontally to the side pillars. When lowered, these panels rest on heavy channels supported by stools built op from angles and plate, and they carry extruded sections which form three tracks for the wheels of the washing machines.
Similar tracks are screwed to the floorboards of the lower deck. Here, the machines are firritly held by rubber covered wedges pivoted on the underside of the hinged panels. The wedges on the upper deck take the form of rubber pads fixed to horizontal beams. The detachable wringers are stowed separately in the front of the semitrailer arid are held at one end in cast trunnions mounted on angles which extend throughout the width of the vehicle, whilst the free end is supported on smaller angles.
The semi-trailer can be loaded in 20 minutes with ease. A ramp is used to 'run the washing machines on to the lower deck, and the hinged floor panels are lowered over them in sequence; the upper deck .is then loaded from an elevated platform.
In service, this method of transportng
washing machines has been fount superior to any previously employed and other vehicles of the same type are being built. Light-alloy materials were supplied by the •Northern Aluminium Co., Ltd., Banbury", Oxon.