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Bryan Jarvis looks at trailer and body trends this century, tracing the pioneers and hunting down the unusual.

At the turn of the cen

tury coachbuilders struggled to adapt traditional horse-drawn wagon designs to the newfangled motorised vans, pantechnicons and charabancs. But rough roads quickly shook vehicles apart. At best the streets had wood block or stone sets or were simply metalled with a thin tar covering; minor roads were generally gritted tracks.

Commercial Motor's first editor, wily old E Shrapnel! Smith, observed that "macadamised" roads were being destroyed by heavy and constant traction engine traffic. He called for the roads to be improved, the introduction of national weight limits and stronger chassis from truck builders.

Solid rubber

Early commercials had hard steel springs and cast artillery-type wheels with solid rubber tyres. So, despite sturdy, timberframed bodies, they soon succumbed to violent twisting and bending forces as well as heavy vibration.

Blacksmiths, wheelwrights and carpenters bodied the trucks which were mainly boxvans or dropsiders with tarpaulin covers over iron hoops, all tied down to iron or nickel hooks or cleats. Floors were usually hardwood or iron plate.

In the early 1900s, chassis and carriage makers made their own dropsides and tippers. Albion devised a three-compartment side and rear tipping body that handled split one-ton loads of coal with tophinged doors and sloping steel floors to aid discharge.

Ruston-Proctor built the first threeway tipping trailer in 1915 with an ironlined timber body, carried on a series of runners with a central longitudinal pivot.

It tipped by moving the floor outwards in either direction using a handwound ratchet mechanism so that the body gently overbalanced, dropping its load on the deck.

That year Wm Glover of Warwick made its first swap system. a street washer/sprinkler body that could be exchanged with a wooden side-tipping body and the City of Westminster council began using petrol-engined Thornycroft drawbars with a range of swap-over bodies.

They included street watering/washing tanker pods, plus other high-skied tipper bodies with hand-wind screw tipping gears.

They were all winched on to standing frames until needed when the truck and trailer were reversed under them to be bolted to the frame.

Perishables such as cut meat, dairy products and bread travelled in boxvans while Hanging carcasses were carried behind canvas on gantry systems, but there were few concessions towards food hygiene.

One of the first insulated lorries was a 35hp French Mors rated at 6.5 tons and having a 2.0 ton payload. Its full-height wooden body had slatted sides, two sets of side access doors, stout outer hinges and central locking bars; side panels were double-skinned with cork insulation.

For 1906 Mors's early reefer truck looked quite smart, almost akin to one of the current rash of home delivery vehicles.

In 1913 a specialist builder, Dodson, of i-lorseferry Road, Westminster, made one of the first meat railers for a Smithfield haulier. It had hanging irons running on rails inside the vehicle's root a well section beneath held cheeses, eggs and prepared food.

By the mid-1920s truck and trailer bodies fell into four main groups; flats with tarpaulins, wood-panelled delivery vans, pantechnicons and tippers of stout wood with steel linings. But specialists were evolvN. , ing.

Dennis of — Guildford made a range of vehicles, mainly fire engines, tippers, municipal street wash' ers, road sweepers and even horseboxes with large, ramped side openings big enough to need a low, dropframed semi-trailer.

One imaginative Amrican bloodstock trainer went a step further with a Mack

bus chassis-based "pullman" horse box built like a huge ornamental teapot, which carried two animals and the grooms in absolute luxury.

Other specialist bodies included tower wagons, milk tankers with glasslined vessels. hooped dust carts, grain hoppers and vans with a forward sliding and rear roof section for carrying tall loads,

Solid rubber

Bromilow & Edwards, Edbro's forerunner, began making hydraulic tipping gears with single and twin rams plus a range of bodywork for up to 12-ton loads.

Some, like the 2.5 ton version, lifted by using twin underfloor rams and had curved outer edges to prevent loads sticking.

Fowler of Leeds was a pioneer of vac uum gully emptiers, the first one based on a 6-ton Karrier with 60hp petrol engine and four-speed gearbox.

The vehicle also had a separate 165gallon vacuum chamber, a 705-gallon sludge tank, an 850-gallon clean water tank, a 70-gallon waste water tank plus street washing apparatus.

In 1927 Thompson Brothers of Bilston was busy making steel spirit tankers and Halley's of Glasgow made 1,000-gallon, three-compartment hot tar tankers. These had asbestos lagging with sheet steel outers bound with steel hoops. Waste recycling was hardly the reason for Garrett's clever four-compartment 5.0-ton payload refuse collecting electric vehicles but it was a forerunner of waste selection.

Garrett built 36 of them for one London council, all with steel side-tipping bodies with roller blinds.

By 1936 bodybuilders were producing beautifully shaped aluminium "publicity specials". These included the Morris onetonner for Electrolux in the shape of a vacuum cleaner, Onoto's pen and inkwell body on a Crossley chassis, Pirelli's tyre body on a Fiat and a bizarre Daimlerbased bottle body special for Worthington Pale Ales.

Rescue gear

Reliability was a problem but, for recoveries, much of the work was done using Harvey Frost rescue gear—mostly handwind cranes with twin tyre towing arnbuIlewsores 1963 noble

lances. dome for Barclay's worms

The US Weaver crane could lift 2.70 tons, but HF's twin-hook crane had a tilting beam and could manages tons.

Norwich-based Mann Egerton made jib cranes to fit to its own service vehicles.

Refinements during the mid-thirties included hydraulic trailer landing legs (thanks to H van Doorne) and, in Scammell's case, rubber suspension for its articulated trailers which all helped to reduce body damage.

At one Olympia show, Anthony, Meiller P and Bromilow & Edwards tippers appeared with both single and twin-ram, front-end and under-body hydraulics. Remote tailgate locking was also becoming common; Anthony Hoists, of Park Royal, London, had one attached to rods and a cross shaft with pivoting catches, all within reach of the driver in his cab.

Waste compaction and moving floor bodies were also making headway with many variations.

Faun used gravity to compress household waste, Pagefield-Kleenaway had a telescoping system while Krupp used a spiral vane and screw gears.

Stool slats

After acquiring Eagle Engineering of Warwick, Dennis began making moving floor bodies using a wide rubberised fabric conveyor belt reinforced with steel slats. On the heavier side Scammell Lorries, of High Holborn, London, built mainly quick-coupling artics plus a range of trailers usually with four or five wheels across the rear, while Multiwheelers, of Grosvenor Gardens, London, built extendible flatbed trailers for hauling cement piles. up to 50 feet long. These had Dewandre vacuum-assisted brakes with Westinghouse couplings,

Butterfields of Shipley built steel tankers, Merryweather made fire engines and Carrymore produced a variety of truck bodies and trailers including street washers. So too did Johnston Brothers of Crutched Friars, London, along with Otters and tar spreaders.

Another enduring name of that period was Thompson Brothers of Bilston which made steel barrelled tankers, including bitumen and tar vessels. To keep the mixture hot and fluid, the vessels were insulated with flocculent or slag wool, made from blast furnace molten slag. • JH Jennings of Sandbach and Portsmouth-based Sparshatt & Sons were both well known innovators, making single and multi-deck cattle trucks, some with hand-winched loading ramps and pivoting inner gates. Jennings later built a reputation for aluminium cabs and bodies. Many body and coachbuilders still preferred to work in steel, leather and woodoak, walnut, beech and ash being in good supply. Dropsides and floors were being tongued and grooved boards and roller shutters too had timber slats.

Aluminium was available but it was expensive and, being of dubious quality, it was prone to cracking from vibration.

In the mid-1940s Birch Brothers of Kentish Town, London, began building prefabricated trailer bodies, using cold rolled sections, substantial floor bearers, top hat section pillars and roof sticks along with hot rolled angles.

Outer panels were wood-lined with thin sheet steel but unusually it had expanded metal wall protectors. Better still was the false decking with conveyor belting beneath it to aid loading and unloading.

The post-war years led to a dearth of good quality hard wood and much had to be imported.

Taxation still depended on unladen weights so operators pricked up their ears at mention of a lightweight body that could save £35 in tax.

Between the wars aluminium was extremely costly but by 1947 timber was costing the nation about .£120m a year, so operators and coachbuilders were forced to use One of the early pioneers of aluminium usage was London Brick which ran mainly AEC Monarchs and Mandators chassis, all with Duramin Engineering's aluminium cabs and bodywork. Cabs were zincchromate plated for longer life.

On a 4.65 tonne Monarch, the 0.53 tonne saved cut £5 from the VED and £1,562 in running costs over its 11-year life. London Brick ran more than 350 vehicles so the savings were immense even then.

Aluminium spirit tankers appeared. APV could build a 2,000-gallon, four-section tanker on a 4x2 Leyland Beaver and still keep within the 12-ton limit.

Bonnallack remained at the forefront of innovation, developing a range of lightweight van bodies to aluminium tankers, Its grain and solid fuel carriers included the Pneumarotor which discharged coal via a Rootes blower and PTO.

It also produced a range of insulated bodywork using materials such as Isoflex and Ebonex as the insulator and aluminium extrusions from Dekaloy and Duramin. Indeed Richard Bonnallack was knighted for his work while his son became a golfing icon.

Raw materials

The second world war proved a great watershed in every respect with food and raw materials scarce and many hauliers using adapted military vehicles.

Some light relief was provided when CM visited Labatt's brewery fleet in Ontario and uncovered their delightfully streamlined White artic drays which our reporter dourly summed up as "rather fanciful".

Closer to home the 1950 Motor Show reflected a growth in imaginative designs.

Thomas Allsop of Sheffield built a beautifully shaped 30ft Hybridge box body on a Ley/and Octopus 8x4, made from aluminium-faced plywood panels with hardwood framing. Finished in cream and bur . gundy, it must have looked an /i

absolute treat. Another stylist was e Scammell & Nephew which added an / equally shapely air-conditioned trailer body to a Carrimore Retractor chas

sis with Leyland Comet unit for Montague Burton to transport men's clothes. That show was staged at a time when Britain was the world's largest CV exporter—in the first half of that year we shipped 150 million worth (73,000) of CVs abroad. How times were to change.

Carrimore, one of the first to build dedicated car transporters, exhibited a two-deck rigid which could take two cars on each deck (later ones would take Five). It operated hydraulically by a parallel link action, secured to four lockable corner posts and pivoting to ground level on hydraulic rams in order to load up.

There was a dearth of insulated vehicles. While meat was carried on hanging frames in boxvans the carcases were prone to damage.

Bodybuilders at the forefront of refrigeration included Hawson (now Hawson Garner) which built the Autofreezer range in 1955 for the meat and dairy trade. The body used aluminium panels with expanded ebonite insulation and had either eutectics (dole plates) or enginedriven refrigeration.

In the same year, Hanson of Liverpool began using refrigerated trailers for hauling milk; its trailers were made of insulated corrugated aluminium and chilled by Sterne cooling units with 0.75hp electric motors and mains standby.

In September 1957 CM helped manufacturer Heston Equipment Co to establish a standard for insulated bodywork: its Hestalite aluminium body used 3.0in Polyzote insulation, (4.0in in the floor) and achieved a 51% efficiency.

Thermo Control of the US (later to become Thermo King) had developed its first over-the-road fridge in 1938 and trailer nose-mounts 10 years later but did not enter UK haulage until1959.

Elsewhere in the US, Union Carbide's Linde Co used nitrogen as a refrigerant in its Polarstream container units, intermittent sprays keeping temperatures down to -20° Fahrenheit. Another British firm to raise standards was Solihull bodybuilder Wilsdon & Co which developed a range of jig-built insulated bodies using polished aluminium and adding meat rails and hooks to the roof. Rear doors were rubber sealed and it had roof ventilators.

By now the UK food industry had to observe TIR rules so standards started to improve.

The sixties brought even more innovation, such as the Walker semi-trailer which used tubular steel crossbearers for the braking system's air chambers.

Wisbech had already become a centre for excellent aluminium welding and In 1963 Murfitt Bulk Transporters developed a novel aluminium van body on an eight-wheeler for delivering malt. Its moving bulkhead was driven hydraulically by chains and sprockets and nudged the grain via an exit grid into the hopper Crane was using disc brakes on 50tonne low-loaders to overcome fade but became a victim of success. it used too much air to achieve the operating pressures needed.

Dyson graced the 1960 show with a smartly streamlined Aerovan trailer for Bass, while Thompson's of Bilston (now Heil UK) revealed a highly futuristic moulded GRP and aluminium Europa integral tanker on an air/steel suspended rear-engined eight-wheeled chassis.

Rear-view optics

It had a Leyland 0-690 200hp Atlantean engine, Pneumo-Cyclic four-speed box and Eaton axles plus early Barr & Stroud rear-view optics.

In 1963 a 6x4 Mk11 appeared with 240hp Rolls 1(60 opposed-piston engine and air-assisted steering. Independent wishbones had Metalastik bushing replacing the original leaf/air front suspension. BP in Denmark ran trials of the 4,000-litre, 20-ton prototype tanker.

In 1969 another milestone passed when Boalloy sprang from the old Bowyer Bros company thus heralding the Tautliner era. It was the first slide-aside curtainsider with integral load restraint and both vertical and horizontal tensioning, and spawned many variations (and imitations) on the design.

The generic Tautliner system, which is still produced at Congleton, was built under licence in 17 countries including Japan and became a byword in trailers worldwide, especially in the US where Utility bought the name from its inventor and then Boalloy co-owner Gerald Broadbent, Other specialist trailer manufacturers from that era included Baden, Crane (now General Trailers), Dyson, Eagle, Hands, Taskers (now part of Montracon) and King.

Home market

These and other famous names built specialist trailers for export as well as the home market and their customer lists were impressive.

York Trailers of Burnley, which numbered BAS and Caledonian Road Services among its customers, reappeared in Corby and, under another industry icon Fred Davies, brought in a new Freightmaster frameless semitrailer van system. Like the Crane Fruehauf range it was made from aluminium lateral planks riveted to internal vertical side posts.

York also added Airpoise air suspension on 40ft flats carrying delicate loads like nuclear reactor components and exported many massive trailers for equally abnormal loads.

One massive flat trailer was exported to Iraq and coupled to huge dump trucks for hauling heavy equipment.

Only York Big-D remains of a huge enterprise that fell apart in the late eighties recession. Its former Northallerton trailer plant is now Utility Trailers' UK base. ..7 But if the post-war years brought innovation, the late seventies and eighties witnessed many redesigns and re-configurations as operators called for greater payloads and carrying capacity.

Use had always been made of extra floors in bodywork but in 1982 a new company, Wilson Double-Deck of Belfast, triggered a demand for dedicated twin decked trailers that exists to this day.

Others, such as Don-Bur, Gray & Adams, Montracon and Schmitz Cargobull, all have systems that make use of the upper space but Wilson also developed specials with elevating floors, rear loading platforms and even curtainsiders with tanks below deck.

In recent years, manufacturers turned to lighter, higher yield steels and aluminium; one or two even made aluminium frames.

Composite materials have also come into more common use; as far back as 1962 Butterfields built a 4,000 litre plastic tanker body on to an ERF eight wheeler. Then in the late seventies, M&G's FRP (fibre reinforced plastic) 33,000 litre fuel tanker earned a Design Council award.

About 50 were built, many for Shell but, despite inherently safe characteristics, they disappeared to some far off land, amid controversy after one developed an internal leak. Rumour has it that they continue to work without any problem. Others like Crane Fruehauf tried their hand at using composites but few to any lasting effect.

Aluminium is common among the tipper and bulker-men and new designs proliferated from companies like Neville Charrold (now part of SDC), York, Weightlifter, Rothdean and, more recently, the United Trailers group (it absorbed Wilcox and Bridge Bodies).

George Neville had some unique steel tippers; its Revolver was built to swivel on a turntable and tip into trains without moving the chassis while the Delescope trailer telescoped for tipping part loads.

Many projects took their toll of the manufacturer; one that contributed was Tidd Trailers' Six-Pack reefer, unkindly referred to by some as the "Tupperware reefer.

Part loads

Built for Glass Glover, it had six multi-temperature lanes and could operate from -20°C to ambient. It increased roll pallet capacity by 70% and cut delivery costs by 20% but it was ahead of the game in outlay and marketability. It didn't survive but then neither did Tidd which went into receivership twice before going bust a few years ago.

Today fewer trailer and bodybuilders, many foreign owned, take a larger share of the overall market while those remaining have been forced to specialise in order to survive.

The Survivors have geared themselves up for the 2000s and, with CAD/CAM systems and some imaginative engineers, are developing the most innovative CV designs and using the best materials. Whether the end product is welded, riveted, bolted or bonded, this element of British manufacturing is every bit as high quality as it ever was.