Double up to cut costs Leyland Daf bucks
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trend as sales fall
• Around £340m a year could be shaved from the UK's road haulage costs if operators moved from standard trailers to double-deckers, says a new report from Heriot-Watt University.
It argues that operators would get an extra 40°0 volume by moving to double-deckers— in the case of 32.5-tonne artics that would also take some 6,500 vehicles off the road.
Professor Alan McKinnon, one of the report's authors, says there are no official statistics on the number of double-deck vehi des on UK roads although one manufacturer puts the figure at about 1,000.
They have been available since the early 1980s: McKinnon believes their slow take-up could be due to a general "conservatism" within the transport industry.
E Copies of Opportunities for Consolidating Volume-Constrained Loads in Double-Deck and High-Cube Vehicles are available from the School of Management, Heriot-Watt University, phone 0131 449 5111, extn 4772.