Tank/container switch with skeletals
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• An ingenious method of utilizing its entire fleet of skeletal trailers for both bulk liquids and container operations has been devised by Samuel Williams Transport Ltd, Dagenham.
The company's engineering section has designed and built a demountable 4000 gall tank which will fit into the attachments on the skeletal trailers—originally made only for carrying containers.
The system will enable Samuel Williams to supply their associate company, John Hudson and Co Ltd, and other major oil companies, with additional vehicles during the winter when fuel oil distribution is at its peak, and use the same trailers during the summer months for container movements.
Six of the new demountable tanks are already in use. These prototypes have been converted from tanks taken off five rigid tankers recently withdrawn from service. A new tank of this type, designed jointly by Samuel Williams and the manufacturers, Crane Fruehauf, is also being used.
Over the next three years about 100 of the company's eight-wheel rigids are to be replaced by articulated vehicles. The tanks from many of these old vehicles will be similarly converted, and the stock of tanks available for this work will be supplemented by a number of new demountable tanks to be built especially for the project. The new system is expected to be particularly valuable for a company such as Samuel Williams which operate a mixed fleet of about 400 container and bulk liquids vehicles.
It is understood that the capital savings made in the cannibalization of tanks from vehicles sold for scrap are far above the cash values realized on sale.