Six Tons of Stores Loaded in Five Minutes
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THE Post Office has recently intro/. duced mechanical handling to reduce loading and unloading times in one of its long-distance bulk-equipment VallS. A Transport steel moving floor, manufactured by Glover, Webb and Eiversidge, Ltd., -Old Kent Road, London, S.E.I, is employed.
Previously considerable time was spent in handling individually, and carefully stacking into the lorries, telephones and other delicate articles of equipment. A full consignment took up to four hours to load, thus preventing a return journey from being made the same day. With the combination of the moving floor, fork-lift trucks and stores pallets, a complete load can be placed in the body of the vehicle by two men in five minutes.
Unloading at the destination is similarly effected without manual handling and the complete operation takes approximately five to six minutes. The cycle of loading, running the outward journey to a Midlands or Northern depot, unloading and returning to base, now occupies two days which has, in some cases, halved the time formerly occupied.
The prototype body on a Maudslay Mogul. chassis is 8 ft. 10 ins, high and 6 ft. 9 ins, wide inside, and the length from the moving head-board to the rear doors is 17 ft. 6 ins. The head-board moves with' thefloor, which is manually operated from the rear of the vehicle, ensuring full control of the operation arid easy communication between the loader controlling the moving floor gear and the driver of the fork-lift truck.
The floor is constructed of galvanized steel slats, linked together in such a manner that water and dust are excluded, and it is supported on roller chains requiring the minimum effort for operation.
The complete moving floor mechanism is assembled as a selfcontained unit and varying types of body can be built around it.
Following the success which attended the employment of the prototype vehicle, the Post Office Supplies Department has since acquired a number of similar machines.
Some idea of how the system saves time and labour 'pay be appreciated from the fact that a fork-lift truck picks up a double pallet, on which can be loaded 112 boxed appliances, each one of which, in the normal way, would call for individual handling.