HOPE DEVICE PASSES TOUGH US ARMY TEST
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Report and pictures by Dick Ross
LAST Saturday at the invitation of 37th Transport Group US Army, commanded by Col. John E. Murray, Mr. Fred Hope successfully demonstrated the Hope anti-jack-knife device on US Army vehicles on a disused autobahn at Ramstein, near Kaiserlautern, Germany.
Present were high-ranking US Army officers, safety officers, German police and representatives of private companies.
Conditions were near-perfect as rain had been falling all night and morning. The surface was uneven concrete, sprayed with foam and detergent by the Army to make it more slippery.
On one of the high-speed runs to show what actually happens when a vehicle jack-knifes, the tractive unit and trailer jack-knifed, went into a broadside skid, continued on towards the spectators missing them by a few feet and came to rest by hitting a spectator's car.
On Fred Hope's next run at 40 m.p.h. on the same surface with the anti-jack-knife device in action, the unit came to rest in a straight line with all wheels locked. The tests were done with empty and loaded trailers. The laden trailer carried a load of 11.5 tons. The tractive units were International Harvester 200 diesels and the trailers were to US Army specifications.
At the end of the demonstration Col. Joseph J. Delaney, executive officer second in command of 37th Transport Group, told COMMERCIAL MOTOR that they were impressed with the tests and safety officers were in full agreement.
Eight of the anti-jack-knife devices are with the Group for thorough testing including material tests. Should orders be forthcoming—and there
is every hope that they will be—they should be in the region of 2,000 units.
37th Transport Group is the trucking company for the whole of Europe. It was used to transfer equipment from France in the recent rundown of NATO troops in that country. It has about 1,100 International Harvester tractive units and just over 2,000 trailers.
Fred Hope had a long discussion with Goodyear International, Luxembourg. Jost Werke-Neu Isenberg, manufacturers of running gear, also showed great interest. Both had attended the tests.
Fred Hope took an able party with him from Self-Energising Disc Brakes Ltd. to Germany one other director, Brian Burletson, sales manager Tony Golding, draughtsman Alec White and, of course, chief engineer Jim Pigney.