Trunking with drawbar demounts
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• Glasgow-based CRS Transport Ltd, of Busby, Clarkston, is starting a day and night Anglo-Scottish trunking operation using 24ft-long demountable bodies on 32-ton wagon-and-trailer outfits. The outfits are Atkinson and Seddon 16-ton four-wheelers pulling Peak trailers. They are on charter hire to Kimberley-Clark Ltd, makers of toilet tissues and industrial towels.
Eight outfits will be used when the operation gets fully under way, some powered by Gardner 6LXB 180 bhp engines and some by 220 bhp Rolls-Royce Eagle engines.
The vehicles carry the products in bulk between depots, and in a typical operation an outfit does an overnight run from Maidstone, Kent, to Newcastle upon Tyne where the loaded bodies are demounted.
Ready-loaded bodies are then picked up for a day-time delivery run to Edinburgh and back to Newcastle, where the reloaded bodies are collected for the night run back to Maidstone. During the next day, the outfit is available for one of Maidstone's shorter journeys to Andover or London Colney, before starting again for Newcastle at night.
So that drivers always return home the same night they exchange vehicles half-way along the Maidstone-Newcastle route.
Extra bumpers incorporating a drawbar coupling are fitted at the front of the Atkinsons and Seddons. The front coupling is used when nosing a trailer under a demounted body, and can be used to manoeuvre the trailer into confined spaces. Ringfeder automatic couplings are fitted at the rear.