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HEAVY HAULIERS WORRIED BY NEW WEIGHTS PROPOSALS

15th November 1963
Page 44
Page 44, 15th November 1963 — HEAVY HAULIERS WORRIED BY NEW WEIGHTS PROPOSALS
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

FROM A• SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT EARS are being expressed by some I heavy-haulage operators that uprated gross weights for five-axle articulated outfits under the proposed new Construction and Use weights and dimensions might mean that many existing Special Types vehicles could not legally be used with their designed payloads. This is because the maximum gross weight proposed for five-axle artics under the new C. and U. limits is 32 tons, permitting a payload of up to about 21 tons, and these new C. and U. vehicles would thus parallel the existing Special Types models carrying loads in the 17-21 ton range—a payload which accounts for about three-quarters of present Special Types work.

As Special Types vehicles are specifically authorized for loads which cannot be carried on C. and U. outfits, some four-axle Special Types vehicles would he usable only for uneconomically light loads which kept them within C. and U. weight limits, or for indivisible loads of more than, say, 22 tons.

The Ministry of Transport is being pressed to write an exemption clause into the regulations to permit Special Types vehicles threatened by_the C. and U. upratings to continue to carry their present toads.

August, 1964, is understood to be still the target date for the new weights and sizes to come into force, but, although the Ministry announced a pause earlier this year to enable comments on its original proposals to be studied in detail, I have been told that the new draft will differ very little from the old. It is likely to incorporate little more in the way of changes than the relatively mild proposals put forward by the S.M.M.T. And, even here, there is some doubt about whether the S.M.M.T.'s strongest request (to reduce the stipulated axle spacings for the maximum-capacity rigid, which would "kill this vehicle stone dead ") will be acceded to by the Ministry.

The Ministry has not yet revealed whether it intends to accept the S.M.M.T.'s recommendation that the new weights and sizes should apply only to new vehicles, but if such a decision is made operators who have bought vehicles and trailers this year with " builtin uprating " may not be able to take advantage of ,these vehicles' full capabilities.

And if the regulations do indeed operate from a date to be specified, with a vehicle's registration date as the criterion, there will be the extraordinary anomaly of two identical vehicles with different permissible maxima simply because their registration dates differ— perhaps only by months.

Already, I learn, the S.M.M.T. has refused to lend support to an R.H.A. suggestion that existing vehicles certified by the manufacturers as suitable for the new loadings should be included in the uprated weights regulations.

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Organisations: Ministry of Transport

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