A success with waste and recycling operators, the moving floor
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trailer has made little impact in the aggregates and asphalt sectors. By focusing on safety and productivity, Lancashire-based Munro Commercials aims to change that, and is targeting the rigid tipper market.
Work /macrecKevin Swallow Operators delivering ,iggregate and asphalt have stuck steadfastly to the tried-and-tested method of tipping their loads out of the back of their 8x4 rigid tipper. The migration to operating tipping trailers seems a logical move, and is often identified as the next step forward.
There are many tangible benefits: an operator can run at 44 tonnes with articulated vehicles, not the 32 tonnes a rigid is limited to. Better payload will reduce the running costs and the carbon footprint, and optimise the fleet.
So why haven't aggregate. muckaway and asphalt operators already moved to this method?
Tipping process The main obstacle is the tipping process. The only thing more unstable than a rigid with a raised tipper body is a semi-trailer with a raised body. Quarry bosses tend to ban articulated tippers because they represent the worst-case scenario; road builders ban them point-blank from dispensing asphalt and only use rigids because they represent the one surefire way of getting the load to the road.
Moving raised tippers. articulated or otherwise. are also prone to hitting overhead cables.This happened in November 2009 at Middlewich, Cheshire, when a raised tipper struck an overhead cable, causing two fatalities.
John Draper, the sales/demonstrator co-ordinator for Munro Commercials, says moving floor trailers provide the answer to health and safety worries, and help to improve productivity as well.
On the move A moving floor trailer is safer because it doesn't go up in the air, he argues. adding: "There is always a danger with tippers. We are pushing the health and safety element of this compared with tipping trailers.
The Munro moving floor demonstration trailer has already been out with an asphalt-laying company, and it was the only articulated vehicle on site, says sales director John Ashworth.
This fact alone provoked a great deal of interest, and although Ashworth won't be drawn on the level of operator enquiries, the demo trailer is in demand, he says.
Increasing the productivity levels for operators, especially if a truck is doing regular daily trips between two sites, cannot be ignored, says Draper, adding: "You can get 20 tonnes on an eightwheeler, on a walking floor trailer at 44 tonnes, you can get 2,8 tonnes plus.
"This will improve productivity. With a client doing roads, using eight-wheelers and 20-tonne payloads, this particular vehicle saves eight tonnes per load over an eight-wheeler that does five trips a day. Using a moving floor trailer would reduce the trips to four,he says.
It would also maximise any asphalting procedures that are done in tunnels; again tipper trucks have a limited scope when it comes to that sort of work.
Munro Commercials has been building the moving floor trailer in one guise or another for a decade, and this is its third stab at the market. Moving floors already run in woodchip markets with lightweight designs, but getting moving floors into the aggregate, sand and asphalt markets has proved difficult.
Construction materials
The demonstrator trailer uses the Keith Walking Floor, Running Floor II. which has nine arms that move forward together to walk the load towards the rear of the trailer. then retract three at a time to begin the next walk.
The trailer is built from aluminium, and the design includes a full-length chassis. Munro Commercials has designed a universal clean-out bulkhead, which also moves forward with the floor and load to clean out the loadspace. •