FARMING TODA
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Delivering farm tractors requires unusual equipment, especially if you want to load three eight-tonners on to one trailer. So when Boston Tractors wanted to upgrade its transport it called in the specialists...
When it comes to Massey Ferguson agricultural tractors, Kongskilde seed drills, Dowdeswell ploughs, and Standen potato harvesters, Alan Piggins would be a natural contestant on Master. mind. Boston Tractors of Lincolnshire sells all of them so as director and group agricultural manager it's Piggins' job to know the answers. If he doesn't, he's sure to know a man who does.
But Piggins readily admits that specifying a tractor and step-frame trailer to deliver these products and others to some 2,000 customers, many of them farmers, is not his special subject. So when it was time to replace Boston's ageing Scania 82, its Hiab grab and 20-yearold Crane Fruehauf semi he called in the specialists, and he's happy with the results.
In January he took delivery of a two-yearold Volvo 320hp FL10 6x2 with a midlift axle; one reason why Piggins favoured the Volvo is because it has the front-axle capacity to cope with the Atlas 4006BA3 grab mounted behind the cab. Martin Ealham, formerly with George Adams of Spalding, is the regular driver.
The FL10 is married to a triaxle step-frame made by Adeliffe of Coleorton near Ashby de La Zouch, Leics. "We had a discussion with Doug Wright of Atlas, who is the grab company's local representative," Piggins explains "Atlas has particularly good aftersales coverage in our area, with a service van based in Boston, and another one in Stamford. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and he and Duffields, the local Volvo dealer, got together and offered some good sound advice on what we should and shouldn't be doing. We don't pretend to be experts on weights and lengths and so on.
"Armed with that," he adds, we went to Adcliffe to get them to put the trailer together. We went there on the recommendation of an exporter who goes over to Ireland with refurbished tractors. He's got an Adcliffe trailer and seems very pleased with it" With depots at Kirton near Boston and Holbeach near Spalding, Boston Tractors is one of Lincolnshire's leading suppliers of agricultural, horticultural, and heavy-duty grass cutting machinery; Kubota mowers and compact tractors are proving particularly popular at the moment. It also has a site at Sculthorpe near Fakenham in Norfolk and runs a Land Rover/Range Rover dealership in Kirton under the Parkside banner.
Unusual shape
"As well as delivering tractors and so on we sometimes have to collect equipment for service and repair," says Piggins. "Ifs not a normal truck driver's job because each product is so different and has to be loaded and secured on the vehicle in a different way. Everything we supply is an unusual shape. What's more, the driver has to be able to show the customer how everything works from front to back, and explain the regular maintenance requirements; possibly to a whole team of people.
"Naturally we ensure the driver is fully trained so he can do this," he adds.
When considering the new axtic Piggins realised that he needed a trailer with a longer, 4m, top deck, but which would remain manoeuvrable enough for the narrow lanes of Lincolnshire and north Norfolk. Following some difficulties with the beavertail on the old trailer he also wanted a rig onto which potato harvesters could be loaded reasonably easily. Initially he wanted to keep the gross weight down to 32 tonnes, but in the end accepted that he would have to go up to 36 tonnes if he wanted to carry three tractors at a time.
A modern farm tractor costs up to £70,000 and can weigh more than eight tonnes. Sometimes they gain a little extra weight: "If you're collecting a tractor from a farmer you have to watch that he hasn't filled the front tyres with a mixture of water and antifreeze to stop the front axle lifting when it's pulling," Piggins says. "That adds substantially to the weight. If he's put water in the rear tyres too--which doesn't happen much these days it could be an extra 3.5 tonnes."
The Adcliffe trailer has outriggers so that it can carry a potato harvester, and skids (small hinged ramps) allowing a tractor to be driven straight on to the upper deck. The outriggers are stowed in cabinets along the trailer's sides along with the straps and chains.
"Normally you have chain rings and rope hooks down the side of a trailer, but there Wasn't enough space to accommodate both properly. So Adcliffe recommended fixed chain rings, and there's a gap between the outrigger and the body so that the chains can go down between them rather than round the outside of the outrigger," says Piggins. "What's more, because the rings are fixed you don't get the constant rattling you can get if they're movable. The trailer has got air suspension and we can raise the rear so that the bottom of the beavertail is very close to the ground. A set of ramps is stowed underneath the beavertail, ready for use."
The new trailer is 42ft long; 4ft longer than its precedecessor. "The way the rig is designed means that we can achieve the same turning circle as our own artic," says Piggins, "but you have to watch the rear overhang when you're manoeuvring in a confined space and you've lifted the back axle."
Although he does not need to run under Special Types, occasionally Piggins has to move equipment with a width greater than 2.9m_ When that happens the police are given notification in good time.
If Piggins had any concerns about his choice of trailer builder it was that he was dealing with a firm 70 miles away rather than a more local company such as Nene Trailer Services at Wisbech. He feared back-up might suffer as a consequence, but he needn't have worried: "We did have a small problem with the trailer, but Adcliffe were more than helpful when it came to sorting it out' he says. because Boston Tractors frequently moves forklifts on behalf of a third-party customer called Lynx (no relationship to the parcels carrier) and sells one or two used forklifts itself.
"We also move equipment around the country on behalf of our own suppliers," Piggins adds. "Dowdeswell might call us and say, 'we've got this 10-furrow plough, it's an unusual bit of kit, we want to do a demonstration at such-and-such a place, we'll pay you to take it over there.' And while companies make nothing out of general haulage, if you're asked to shift something like that...well, I won't say you can charge whatever you want, but you can earn some reasonable money out of it Potato harvester
"Furthermore," he adds, "if we're asked to take a forklift up to, say, North Yorkshire, we'll always try to backload with something else. Sometimes we'll have a farmer ring us and say, 'look, I've bought a potato harvester, it's down in Essex, can you fetch it for me?' Doing that sort of thing has almost paid for the cost of changing our trucks and it means that the drivers are never idle" Sales are less seasonal than you might think year-round at Kirton and Holbeach, but show peaks and troughs at Sculthorpe. "In north Norfolk the pattern of farming tends to be driven in the main by sugar beet and cereals," says Piggins. "Around Kirton and Holbeach, you name it and they grow it" The FL10 will probably stay in service for five years and, like the FL617, will cover around 30,000 miles a year. They share Boston Tractors' yards with 30 light vehicles, including Vauxhall Brava pickups and a dozen or so Ford Transits used as repair and maintenance vans. All the vehicles are frequently washed and sprayed with a special chemical to prevent the spread of agricultural diseases, especially those affecting sugar beet.
But doesn't the company need 4x4s to get out to tractors broken down in the middle of fields? "A lot of farmers won't let us take vehicles into their fields because they're worried about compaction of the soil, even in dry weather," Piggins replies. "Either they'll tow the tractor or whatever to the edge of the field, or lend us another tractor so we can."
So what happened to the old Scania, its Hiab, and its trailer? "They were all still in good condition, so I sold them to a Massey Ferguson dealer friend of mine in Norfolk for £10,000," Piggins says. It goes to show that picking the right equipment pays dividends. LI by Steve Banner FACTFILE BOSTON TRACTORS BASED: Holbeach near Spalding, Lincs. CONTACT: Bryan Dobbs, managing director. FLEET: Volvo FL10 6x2 tractor unit and Adcliffe step frame at 36 tonnes; Volvo FL617 rigid at 17 tonnes; mixed fleet of 30 light vehicles including Ford Transits and Vauxhall Brava pickups. MAIN ACTIVITY: Sale, service and repair of agricultural and horticultural equipment; Massey Ferguson tractor dealers. SPECIALITY CONTRACT: Transporting forklifts. TURNOVER: Approx £..1 4m a year; agricultural/horticultural business accounts for around £11.5m.