Demount tail lifts aid BRS
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• Nottingham-based furniture manufacturer William Lawrence has fitted Ray Smith cantilever tail-lifts to the bodyframes of its demountable trailers. It is unusual to fit tail-lifts to trailer bodies, says Ray Smith; most operators fit them to the chassis. Walter Lawrence, however, has opted for such a system to solve dock-levelling problems at its loading bays and at other delivery points.
The D-Series cantilever lifts were supplied by Ray Smith with special demounting kits for Walter Lawrence's Ford Cargo rigids and the demount body basefrarnes. BRS Midlands is running the system on a five-year contract.
BRS is using the cantilever lifts as loading ramps while the demount bodies are parked in the bays on their own freestanding support legs. The bank is about 600mm too low for modern vehicle floors.
Twin-column lifts would not have been suitable, says the company, because the platform would not have been able to tilt downwards from the back of the body to the dock.
The cantilever platforms also needed to be 1.8m wide, which would have meant that a similarly-sized column-lift platform would need an auxiliary closure system. This width is needed to handle large items of furniture.
Power for the tail-lifts is supplied by the vehicle's battery when the truck is on the road, or by mains electricity when the demount body is on delivery and parked at the warehouse or loading bay.