With today's regulations, it makes sense to pay a little more for safety features'
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‘ ne of the most difficult jobs in transport is trying to charge customers for trailer features that are included purely for safety's sake. It remains an uphill struggle if the features are not demanded by legislation or regulation.
Green products meet with reasonable acceptance but try to sell an operator extra cargo control necessary to contain his load for the safety of his personnel and other road users and you get a pretty negative response; "It will delay my loading, it will be in the way on the back load and it's expensive."
How many are aware of the regulations which insist that it is not good enough for the load to be retained by the vehicle body but must be fully restrained within the trailer to avoid tough penalties if an accident occurs?
Thanks to legislation hauliers are now landed with sideguards—a blessing for the sales person who previously struggled to charge for access rails for safe entry to the load along the side of a delivery vehicle. Now we have them in front of the axles. But try to charge for some behind the axle to gain access to the back part of the load and that's another matter: -Think of the weight—why can't the driver use the back door? We never used to have them," comes the response.
Legislation on rear under-run bars stopped the practice of some bodybuilders cutting a six-inch hole in the van's back panel; never quite big enough for steel capped boots!
After observing trailers for nearly 50 years lam still astonished to see a gap of no more than three inches between the top of the under-run bar and the rear finisher panel—a defect that is the result of pure thoughtlessness.
As you can imagine, curtain strap hooks, fixings, buckles and the straps themselves have figured largely in my life for the past 25 years as well as the fabric of the curtains. Yet on the road [still see cheap options to the good quality products available.
It is essential for the safety of the public and the transport company's drivers that hooks should be hooks in name only. They should be softly-shaped to prevent them capturing each other when the curtains are bunched, causing the person closing to stumble when caught hooks halt a closing curtain. Safety hooks also avoid the danger of becoming embedded in clothes or flesh if they swing free from a moving vehicle.
A good safety hook is more costly in itself and more difficult to sew into place because it cannot be threaded on to the strap after the attachment loop has been sewn in. It is not easily replaceable, which prevents the unscrupulous repair man from slipping another one on to a badly worn strap.
The first Tautliner I designed in 1969 had rings to fit on rope hooks instead of conventional hooks. Unfortunately, the wide variation in rope hook spacing made this impractical once mass production began.
Tougher webbing that does not fray costs pennies more than its cheaper counterpart, but the hard bargains struck for replacement bottom straps rule out quality and safety in many cases. And it is not just the straps—to some, a buckle is a buckle is a buckle.
But if a buckle does not function easily every time, you can rest assured the loader will not effectively tighten the strap whether it is for an external or internal application.
A few years ago hook makers were asked by some body builders—certainly less caring than the ones I have been associated with— to open the angle of the hook. If the buckle was ineffective, the hook could drop clear of the side rave flange when eventually the buckle had to be forced open by a lever.
Regulations are tightening; cases are coming to court. I hope for the sake of the operators who may get caught out that they
can be persuaded to pay a little more for a safety features It is worth it in the long run. 7 L If you want to sound off about a road transport issue please write to features editor Patric Cunnane.