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MARGINAL increases in weight limits for rigid multi-axled lorries ought to have been included in the Government's White Paper proposals, the Freight Transport Association said this week.
Commenting in detail on the proposals, it regrets that such improvements which would have brought engineering and operating benefits have been sacrificed for purely political reasons.
The stipulation that a 40-tonne articulated outfit needs a double-drive tractive unit has no technical foundation, it argued, as a two-axle unit and tri-axle semi-trailer can perform the same job.
A 24-tonne semi-trailer bogie would need axles spaced at 1.6m, and providing a maximum weight of 8,000kg for any one of its three axles. Alternatively, a single-drive three-axle tractive unit with equal tandem axles ,could be mated to a two-axle semi-trailer.
The FTA said that there is no logic in having separate length limits for semi-trailers, providing the 15.5m overall limit is not broken.
. It has accepted the value of sideguards, but believes that a single bar, rather than 90 per cent infill of the relevant area, would suffice.