LONGER SEMI-TRAILER TIMEFRAME: CAN IT BE DONE?
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Andy Dodge, sales director at manufacturer Lawrence David, said: "You could turn a longer semi-trailer around in two to three months. To engineer it from new, you're looking at more like three to five months. There are 180 operators with allocations [as it stands], and even among individual operators they often want differing trailer designs."
Richard Owens, group marketing manager at Don Bur, said: "While three months is standard for a normal trailer, as soon as you are talking about something more complicated, you're looking at longer than this."
A Montracon spokesman said: "Four months would be the very minimum, with up to six months or more for high-volume orders."
Mark Cuskeran, MD of SDC, said: "[We build] 25 trailers a day and can meet a three-month deadline if required by the DfT's new licence arrangement. We welcome the proposed changes as they should open up the longer trailer market to more operators."
Darren Holland, group sales director at Cartwright Group, suggested the issue could be avoided altogether if the DfT instead issued new allocations once "evidence of securing a contract/operation to support the equipment was supplied by the operator".