Container Transport
Page 58
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A CHEQUE for over £53,000 changed hands on Monday on the snow-covered circulating area of the Birmingham Containerbase at College Row, Perry Barr. Mr. Duncan Foulds, chairman of Bulwark Contracts Ltd., was settling up for 16 Ford D1000 tractive units, a dozen of which had just been handed over to his company by Reginald ToWesley Ltd. Mr. Foulds held up the cheque "so that the drivers shall know something of the
A SIMPLE, but effective, method of handling containers is revealed in this exclusive photograph obtained from the USA by a wellknown Birmingham equipment manufacturer. Apart from the widely used straddle carrier, at least one American freight depot is equipped with the heavy-duty trestles shown here.
Containers, such as these 20-footers, are lifted from trailers by the straddle-carrier and landed with the rear end on the special edge The tractive units are being operated by Bulwark on a five-year contract for Overseas Containers Ltd. Most of the containerbases are rail-linked but Birmingham is served entirely by road and the area covered from this centre extends roughly from Stoke-on-Trent to Banbury and from the Welsh coast to The Wash. The OCL consortium is providing six ships for the UK-Australia container service (ACT providing three ships) due to start on March 1 from Tilbury, and OCL w4 be among those using facilities provided by the Containerbase Federation Ltd. at its six inland depots throughout the UK. The vehicles will be used to move OCL containers on the company's own trailers.
All the drivers of the OCL vehicles involved are men of proven experience but before_ being passed for this duty each had to take a course at Bulwark's advance driving school, and at Monday's vehicle handing-over ceremony Mr. Foulds presented the men with their certificates. Commented Mr. Peter Brown, managing director of Reginald Tildesley Ltd.: "When you have the right drivers you are 50 per cent of the way to complete success on the mechanical side."
Obvious savings result from the release of semi-trailers for further use, and it would seem relatively easy to provide intermediate trestles when fully laden 30ft or 40ft containers are involved.
Note the extensive provision of dock-levelle IS.