Expediting Timber Loading and Unloading
Page 47
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AS timber merchants and hauliers know only too well, irritating delays are often experienced in connection with the loading and unloading of wood. The burden usually overhangs the end of the lorry body, so that it is necessary to take precautions in order to prevent individual pieces from sliding off, whilst it is necessary for the load to be securely lashed and, in the case of soft, light timber, the ropes sometimes bite into its edges.
By the employment of a new patent tailboard, which has been designed and produced by the North _ London Engineering Co., Ltd., of 104, Cobbold Road, London, N.W.10, these die-. culties are largely overcome.
,The device is simple in construction• and can easily be operated._ It consists of a tailboard mounted upon a sliding assembly which can be moved rearwards. At the rear, each body aide his attached to it a channel-steel member, which slopes down from a point just below the top of the .side to the lower corner. A transverse plank is fixed to each of the bars which slides in these guides ; this carries hinges through which the tailboard hinge-pin passes.
Bolted to the floor of the body, at a point just ahead of the transverse plank, is a bridge piece upon which the rear part of the load rests. Hinged to each sliSping guide is a curved lever with an eye-hole at one end.
In order to load or unload, the sliding assembly may be drawn out to any distance up to 3 ft. When the timber is in place, the tailboard is erected, it being maintained ip a vertical position by means of the curved levers into the eyeholes of which pins are plated, as
well as by chains. The load rests against the vertical tailboard and, in this way, it cannot slide off the' lorry, whilst we are told that it is unnecessary even to pass a rope over it in order to keep it in 'position.
The inner faces of the front gantry arms have holes into which a steel bar fits, the latter being placed above the. planks in order to make them secure. The North London Engineering Co., Ltd., has also taken out a patent op this arrangement.
The patent tailboard and gantry are being employed on some of the vehicles operated by Cousland and Browne, Ltd„ a concern of timber merchants, with offices at Victoria Road, London, N.W.10. This company is highly sati%fled with the economies that have been effected since the installation of thesa devices, and we are assured that, 'in some cases, 15 minutes are saved per loading and unloading operation. This has resulted in a larger number of deliveries per week being made without increasing the number of vehicles employed.