CARRYING THE CUMBER 1ME AND HEAVY LOAD.
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ONE of the most fascinating and striking phases of transport is that concerning awkward and often very heavy loads, such as are represented by steam boilers, electric transformers, heavy castings and for gings for ships' sternposts, rudders, etc., gates for
, docks, huge girders for buildings and hundreds of other articles which require exceptional treatment and do not come within the province of the ordinary haulier.
The concerns dealing with such work to any great extent can' be counted upon the fingers of one hand, and of these the outstanding are Norman E. Box, Ltd., of Rusholme Road, Ardwick Green, Manchester, and Pickfords, Ltd„ the heavy-haulage department of the latter being at 151, Tower Bridge Road, London, S.E.1, whilst there is a smaller depot at Birmingham for this type of transport.
The problems involved are many and may be said to vary with each particular fob, and the actual transporting of the load is only part of the main work.
There is the first loading, which may quite easily in volve the demolition of a building or the . digging of huge pits, and after the journey the articles carried must he placed into exact position, and as some of them weigh 100 tons, or even more, the labour and machinery required for the tasks must be cOmmensurate.•
In the transport there are many difficulties, tiny one of which would almost overawe the man who is only familiar with the handling of weights up to, say, 5 tons. The route must be carefully studied, due note being made of bridges under or over which the outfit may have to pass, and if any bridge be too small or too weak to permit this, a circuitous route, involving many additional miles, will be necegsary in order to by-pass it. In many districts the roads are so narrow that difficulty may be experienced in taking, say, long girders around corners or in dealing with particularlY Wide objects. Instances have occurred where hedges and banks at the sides of the road have had to be. levelled, and this brings up the subject of extraneous damage which may. be caused to property in general. Fortunately, the transport wagons and trailers which have been evolved for this class of Work are carefully designed to limit damage to B32 the minimum, and of recent years great success has been achieved in this direction ; in fact, we were informed by one company which does a great deal of this work that although loads up to 100 tons are constantly being carried no injury to the roads has been noted ; but, of course, special precautions have to be taken, and in crossing culverts, soft ground, etc., a temporary surface may have to be formed from steel plates over which the trucks are roped.
For the very heavy work the ideal outfit appears to be a steam tractor hauling a multi-wheeled trailer or one or more special bogie trailers. The chief benefit with the steam. tractor is the enormous power which it can develop and the use which can be made of its winding drum as an aid to loading and unloading; it
is also a 4tople matter to equip tractors with powerful cranes.
Pickfords, Ltd., is one of the oldest companies in the road-transport industry, but up to 1902 the heavyhaulage side of the business was carried out by horses, after which there was a change over to steam., which has been found invaluable for the really heavy classes of work.
It is the proud boast of this company that it is prepared to tackle the transport of anything from a 4d. parcel to a 100-ton load in one piece. in addition, it claims to be the biggest household remover in the world. •
The fleet totals something like 500 vehicles, but here we shall deal only with the medium and heavy-haulage side, and, in this, awkward loads i'ind weights up to 10 tons are transported by the aid of eight small 29 h.p. Lath l tractors with four-wheel drive and capstans at the rear. Haulage up to 30 tons is carried out bY larger Latil tractors, and for other -work three Fowler traction engines are employed, these ftaction
engines being equipped with cranes to lift 10 tons. For the comparatively fast transport of-medium loads there are eight specially built flexible six-wheelers of Saurer and other makes.
The company was the originator of the type of truck having four whePls mounted on two detachable axles at the rear ; that employed has rubber-tyred wheels running on ball bearings.
Then there are four heavy-duty trucks, each carrying -up to 30 tons and mounted on rubber tyres. Some of these have four wheels at the rear and others two. It is interesting to note that all trucks carrying loads up to 30 tons are sprung. There are also many types of floats with loadlines ranging from 1 ft. 5 ins. high. These carry loads of 15 tons or so. The heaviest individual truck carries 60 tons, and for bigger loads two of these are coupled together ; their utility is increased by the employment of swinging bolsters, which greatly assist cornering.
For the manipulation of articles inside buildings after unloading from the road-transport machines there are rubber-tyred hand-operated bogies, these also having swinging bolsters.
For aircraft carrying special provision is made, and the company claims to have been the first to build twowheeled trailers for this work.
All sorts of lighter vehicles are utilized' when and where necessary.
.Much use is made of mobile cranes, there being three of the petrol-electric type built by Ransomes and 'Rapier, Ltd. One of these .lifts 2l tons and the other two up to 5 tons. These cranes are kept very fully occupied, particularly where exhibits have to be dealt with.
In conducting its transpoyt work the company takes all risks, inclading third-party and others, such as possible damage to water mains, sewers, etc. Much of the work consists in the fulfilling of such big contracts as the transport in connection with the British Industries Fair, the whole of which has been done by the 'company for the years 1920, 1.927 and 1928. It also .dealt with the exhibits at the Shipping 'and Engineering Exhibition at Olympia for 1925 and 1927 and is official contractor for 1928 for the whole of the Machine .Tool and .Engineering Trades Exhibit:
During the past year the company effected a. record removal of the whole of the A.E.O. stores and machine-tool equipment from Walthamstow to Southall, the total load carried amounting to 10,000 tons. This included the removal of heavy tools, .etc.; from a fourstoried building and transferring them to a building of one storey.
Carrying Half a Steam Yacht.
Some special and unusual tasks have been successfully performed. For instance, not long 'ago, the stern .'half of the steam yacht " Turbinia," which was the first turbine-driven vessel, was taken from the Surrey Commercial Docks to South Kensington Museum; this load . was in the neighbourhood of 40 tons. Only two or three weeks ago a girder 98 ft. long, which had-been transported by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, was unloaded on to Pickford trucks and conveyed through London. • This girder is claimed to be the longest which has ever been carried through the
Metropolis. It was illustrated in our issue dated February 21st.
The owner of an estate near Chard built himself a motor cruiser 65 ft. long. Then, however, came the problem of how it was to be taken to the Water. To do so the building in which it was constructed was demolished, the boat lifted on to a •special truck by four 5-ton jacks and conveyed some 15 miles through narrow Devonshire lanes to the sea at Seaton. Here it had to be lifted over the sea wall before reaching Its destination.
Another awkward load was a tank 15 ft. wide. The company has recently built a 25-30-ton rubbertyred truck with four wheels, and another vehicle owned by the company is a Saurer with 4-ton double traversing blocks, which is used for the transport of cable drums; the, blocks lifting each drum by means of a bar passed through the centre.
An important section of the work is that_ of transport of steam cranes ; often four a day are carried, as, for example, last week, when one Was conveyed from Bush House to Grosvenor House. This crane has a 60-ft. jib, and the crane driver was on board so that he could guide the jib around corners. The crane was at work on one site at 7 p.m. and on the other at 8 a.m.. the fbllowing day. "
To carry these cranes, standard-gauge lines are laid, down on the vehicles, which are flexible six-wheelers or special trailers.
Another awkward load which sometimes has to be carried is a Ruston crane excavator, or steam navvy, weighing 35-40 tons.
A Prominent Manchester Haulier.
Norman E. Box, Ltd., started this work in Manchester in 1906, but the father of the present managing director had already been in the same line of business for many years in Liverpool.
• The main work undertaken is heavy haulage and the erection of machinery. In replying to our query as to what transport work would be undertaken, we were informed that the company would deal with anything which can pass over or under the bridges on any route throughout the country between Aberdeen and Southampton.
A big development 'is being made in the direction of tar spraying and grouting methods on roads carrying heavy weights for which a Fowler-Wood apparatus is employed, the work being done so expeditiously that roads so treated can be used almost immediately. by traffic. However, this is diverging from the subject of our article. The steam appliances employed on heavy haulage work are chiefly Fowler road locomotives equipped with ,rubber tyres on both front and rear wheels, some of these at the rear taking the form of pads, whilst the ()then are endless bands.
On two of these locomotives are 12-ton jib cranes fulcrumed on extension brackets in front of the boiler. These cranes prove most useful for many classes of work, including the lifting of broken-down vehicles in all sorts of circumstances, many being removed expedi
tiously from tramlines. This street-clearing work is an important side line.
In the old days most of the trailers had built-up wheels with steel tyres, whilst others were equipped with wood wheels,, the tyres of which were pressed On. Now all are fitted with cast-steel wheels running on ball and roller bearings. . ; For 'moving the heaviest loads the company now adopts eight-wheeled and twelve-wheeled wagons, which give an excellent distribution of the weight, and everything possible is being donc to persuade the tyre manufacturers to guarantee tyres for the extra heavy loads. Solid-rubber tyres are already used upon some of the eight-wheeled wagons for carrying medium loads. These wagons are of a design patented by the company, the wheels being mounted 'upon rockers.
This method of supporting the load -"ensures that the wheels will follow the contour of the road Eipd thus avoid the imposing of excessive stresses upon it. It may also be mentioned that the cranes utilized on the locomotives are equipped with the company's pateht form of drive, and can lift 12 toils stead of of the 6 tons which is usual.
Heavy boilers sometimes have to be placed in most awkWard places after being transported. For example, one huge boiler for the house of Lewis in Manchester had .to, be rolled into a pit, dropped a further 4 ft. by hydraulic jacks and moved endwise for 50 ft.