A SEMI-TRAILER WITH TWIN-AXLES AND REAR WHEELS.
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ALTHOUGH of recent years great progress has been made in the construction and maintenance of roadways in order to enable them to' withstand the effects of the heavy modern traffic to which. they are subjected, much of the existing street paving is not able to carry the heaviest classes of traffic. There is, of course, a definite limit to the weight of traffic which can he borne by road surfaces and foundations of the present day, and such loads as boilers and ships' ca.atings, which very often weigh anything up to 100 tons, are bound to have a detrimental effect on the road:: if they are transported over them. '
incurred on streets in the city due to the haulage of extraordinary loads by mechanical' vehicles.
We are led to write in this manner following the introduction of a semitrailer which has four separate rear wheels. The trailer to which we refer is the Detroit, built by the Detroit Trailer Co., of Detroit It is constructed to carry loads up to 20 tons, and, ilthough it is not capable of dealing with the very heaviest types of loads, it is a type which may be capable of naodification to enable it to be used for this class of work.
It will be seen from the illustrations that it has two separate rear axles, each of which possesses two wheels which are shod with triple tyres 12 ins, wide. The radius rods which are provided are ball-jointed in order ta, enable extreme variations in road surfaces to be followed without unduly stressing the machine. There is little doubt that, by distributing the load over two axles and four rear wheels, the road surface is not liable to the excessive strain to which it is subjected when a heavy load is carried on a single axle.