COVER PICTURE STORY
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Shell's French dressing
• Colas Roads, a Shell subsidiary, is operating the first all-in-one road surface dresser of its type in the UK, courtesy of its French sister company.
Built by French engineers Secmair on a 5.0m Leyland Daf 24.26 6x 4 chassis at a cost of around £135 000, the vehicle is aimed at providing authorities with quick, costeffective road repairs.
The outfit comprises an aluminium-clad 3,500-litre steel tank supplying hot bitumin emulsion through a spraybar set behind the 7.0m3
aluminium body. This tips via twin underfloor rams.
Between them, a hydraulic crane, bucket loads aggregate into the tipper with its 3.1m chip-spreading gate. As it tips, an underfloor ty-red roller compacts the mix laid down.
A computer control unit in the cab regulates the relative speeds of the components and the rearward-moving vehicle is operated by the driver and an operator on the rear platform. The whole machine can be controlled by one person only, via a dual control system at the rear.