United steals march on next-day parcels
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• United Parcels has made a belated entry into the nextday parcels market with a unique system of demountable drawbar trunking vehicles and small local delivery vans.
It has built a hub parcels sorting centre 6.5km from the M6/M1 motorway interesection near Rugby and has installed body-swapping gantry cranes at 10 satellite depots.
This is the heart of Multifreight, an autonomous operating company within the United Parcels group, which adds a next-day service to the range of parcels delivery services already offered by group companies.
The vehicles used to provide the service set it apart from longer established express parcels services.
In place of conventional demountable boxes, Multifreight uses 2.5m by 2.13m bodies which are built to a standard size of 1.83m high (capacity 8.5m3) or a smaller size of 1.22m high.
For local deliveries the boxes are carried on 3.5 tonne GVW Bedford CF350 chassis/cabs. Bulkier consign ments are handled by fitting two bodies lengthwise on Bedford TL 7.5 tonners which are subject to hours and tachograph rules.
The CF vans have 910mm of additional non-demountable load space behind the cab, and the boxes open on four sides.
For trunk runs between the satellite depots and the Rugby hub, Daf 2100 drawbar combinations carry up to 12 — nine of them standard size — boxes in two decks on the lorry and trailer.
United has harnessed group resources to build the vehicles. Abel Demountable Systems, part of Unitedowned York Transport Engineering, supplied demountable frames, and adaptor frames, while the boxes and the cab conversions were built by York Bodybuilders.
Night sorting of trunk vehicles is undertaken at Rugby without demounting the bodies from the trailer or from the double-deck frames on the Dafs. Instead, parcels are unloaded on to two sorting levels in the depot.