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Coke by Cobra

2nd January 1976, Page 26
2nd January 1976
Page 26
Page 27
Page 26, 2nd January 1976 — Coke by Cobra
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WITH the EEC eight-hour driving day looming, many operators will be taking a new look at the viability of road-rail operations One company which has invested in a road-rail operation and remained competitive with throughout road haulage in realistic cost per ton is Cobra Containers Ltd, of Calder Vale Road, Wakefield. The company has been running its own containers on a coke trunking and delivery operation since 1969 and can now also offer hauliers an ex-yard service for the delivery of coke in their own vehicles.

Mr H. W. Broadbent, a director of the company, outlined some of the advantages of road-rail so far as his company is concerned.

Cobra Containers Ltd was formed in 1969, the decision to operate a container road-rail interchange being taken partly as a result of proposals then being considered by Transport Minister Barbara Castle, to limit operators' licences and restrict their radius of operation.

Mr Broadbent explained that foundry coke is manufactured in two areas of the country, County Durham and in South Wales. The Cobra business is devoted entirely to the distribution by container of foundry coke from Newcastle-on-Tyne coking plants of National Smokeless Fuels, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Coal Board.

In the main, the company's customers are the established coke merchants and deliveries are made by road from the railhead in Wakefield to foundries as far apart as Derby in the South and Shotton in the West.

The coke trains recently averaging around 406 tonnes (400 tons) (32 containers at 12.7 tonnes) (12.5 tons each) arrive in Wakefield from Newcastleon-Tyne each morning at 10.30 am. The containers are unloaded by fork-lift truck and by 2 pm the train is ready to leave again with empty containers which will be reloaded at the coking plant during the night shift ready to repeat the cycle.

By using lift on/off containers Cobra handles between three and five trains per week, or a maximum of about 2,000 tons of foundry coke with only three men actually on the company payroll.

Although the company owns the containers it does not operate its own truck fleet, Road haulage is subcontracted, mainly to a Worksop haulier, M. S. Middleton and Son Ltd, who provides sixand eightwheeled rigid and articulated units to carry the containers.

From the haulier's point of view advantages of the roadrail container system are shorter journeys, with consequent fuel saving and rapid turnround. A truck arriving at Calder Vale Road can be loaded in about six minutes, the total time including weighing and ticketing — which contrasts with the hours an individual truck can waste waiting to load at the coking plant.

The company also allows the haulier to use the containers for his own back-loads within reason, say sand or gravel, etc, but naturally draws the line at heavy scrap which can easily damage the container, While at Wakefield I was able to speak to the operator, Mr Middleton, who expressed his own satisfaction with the system. He was particularly pleased with the reduction of waiting time which helps keep down his own costs, and also said that the back-loading "helped put the jam on the bread."

Although the company is wholly container-oriented it does provide facilities for transferring the coke from a container into open tippers if need be. Loaded containers are lifted on to an overhead gantry usIing the fork-lift truck and discharged by tipping on to a conveyor-belt loading boom. Th4 boom is lowered into the body of the road vehicle waiting below. Mr Broadbent told me that while they preferred to see the coke delivered in containers to the customer the transfer plant enabled merchants to collect the foundry coke from the depot with their own vehicles or with their own contractor's vehicles if they so wished. Furthermore, foundries with restricted access or small demand necessitated the use of small four-wheeled tippers which are loaded under the boom.

Apparently the facility is popular with operators from the Manchester area; even allowing for the extra time taken to load the vehicles can often make two trips to Wakefield and back in the day, rather than only one which would be possible if the truck were to go all the way to Newcastleon-Tyne.

• The company has 85 ISO type containers on its books. Initially it began operation in 1969 with 20ft modules which are built to standard ISO dimensions and, with one exception, they are only 2.1m (7ft) high. As •the containers were carried on BR-converted ex-steel carrying rolling stock the reduction in height was necessary to meet loading gauge restriction. In practice the lower height means very little reduction in carrying capacity, as loads can be heaped.

Initially cautious of their reception the company opted for the 20ft units so that they could be used to carry other materials on Freightliner services if need be. However, despite some basic resistance towards containers which was responsible for the fairly slow build-up of traffic, in fact the need has never arisen. Purchasing reflects operating experience and the last 10 container units to be purchased are 7.3m (24ft) long; 3.04 tonnes (3 tons) unladen weight they can carry 17.2 tonnes (17 tons) of coke. Mr Broadbent said that as the company renewed containers it might well opt for 7.3m (24ft) long replacements but would need to keep at least some 20ft units, as access to some foundries •is limited.

As coke is an abrasive material I asked Mr Broadbent about the life expectancy of the containers. In fact, as the average container movement is only about two round trips per week, abrasion of the interior of the box is not significant. The big problem apparently is rusting of the outer surfaces.

Unless the surface is properly prepared by sandblasting before painting, rust quickly breaks out Some of the first containers to enter service (now six years old) have already been rebuilt satisfactorily by cutting away the corroded sheet metal from the the box-section frames and recladding with new steel.

Mr Broadbent said that a container could be rebuilt in this way in far less time than it takes to build •a new unit and for approximately half the current cost.

As far as co-operation with the State-owned companies was concerned, Mr Broadbent said that his company had always had the utmost co-operation from both National Smokeless Fuels and British Rail in the pastand felt that it would continue to do so.


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