Immaculate examples of engineering excellence-25 in all — gathered at Silverstone
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Circuit last month to compete for top honours in Commercial Motor's Trailer of the Year Competition. This event, now in its second year, has caught the imagination of trailer manufacturers far and wide, bringing entries from Germany and France. We review the starting grid... There's no better way to gain a wide view of Britain's trailer market than by looking at the entries in this year's Commercial Motor Trailer of the Year competition.
The event gives engineers the opportunity to show off their innovative skills at building dedicated and multi-purpose vehicles and at making clever adaptations of existing ideas, It also highlights standard products such as curtainsider freight trailers, refrigerated box vans and aluminium tippers.
Commonplace stuff but all honed to nearperfection through years of build and user experience and built to an extremely high, long lasting quality.
Because last year's inaugural event attracted such a large field of competitors from a wide cross-section of the industry, two extra categories—tankers and intermodal—were added this year.
Although there are innovative intermodal designs out there, regrettably this section attracted just a single, though highly ingenious entry.
Commitment
Manufacturers will say that it's all down to a lack of commitment to and investment in a national road/rail infrastructure; that there's too much distraction and not enough real action.
The Government might choose to ignore the Opposition but it should certainly take note of the interest shown by those sponsoring our event; MAN, Groeneveld, Truck-Lite, Thermo King, Rockwell Automotive RO-R, Bendix and TIP Trailer Rentals.
The Dry Freight category brought together a trio of well-known names.
Tidd Trailers brought along its highly innovative moving floor two-decker, one of a large number for Parceline and designed specifically to carry parcels or pallet loads.
Lawrence David offered its galvanised, bolted dual-purpose 90/38 Traccess curtainsider, similar to a number already in use with Tesco.
It has several unusual features including Tesco's own load restraint and moving false bulkhead to guard against axle overloads when carrying part loads.
Another with extra flooring was Don-Bur's tidy looking Palletmaster brewery trailer with flip-down central walls which gives Whitbread the ability to return empty containers.
The high standards demanded by the food industry was reflected in entries for our Controlled Temperature group.
It included a brace of high-quality reefer boxes; an aramid fibre panelled trailer from Norfrig GB and an innovative multi-temperature Schmitz reefer.
Clever use of a divider wall, transverse moving partitions and temperature modulation via air ducting gives the user Lidl UK many options for carrying foodstuffs.
In sharp contrast, Clayton Commercials' entered a novel insulated and refrigerated stainless steel tanker built to carry liquid egg.
A Transliner compartmented reefer in the AF Blakemore fleet was withdrawn at the eleventh hour due, it was said, to nonavailability.
There was more juxtaposition with the three entries in the Bulker section.
Warley Truck Bodies brought along its Mega-Jecta, a hightensile steel trailer using an ejector blade for off-loading waste or scrap metal.
Weightlifter presented a 50ycl grain-carrying tipper from its Bulkmaster range, built to a high spec for Banks of Sandy while Wisbech Bulk Services entered a refuse collection trailer first seen at the IWM show.
Built for Glastonbury-based Perry Waste it bristled with features such as the Hyva moving deck, Hiab crane and Harsh load cover system.
All four entries in the Tanker line-up were superb examples but aimed at specific market sectors.
List year's Category and Overall winner, Thompson Carmichael, pitted a novel "tip-up" discharge sugar tanker against Magyar's dedicated liquid food product tanker and Clayton Commercial's GP chemical carrier.
Vying with these was the other monocoque in the quartet, from liquid waste specialist Vallely Engineering.
Maxilode's latest Extendaslicle skeletal trailer cut a solitary but impressive figure in the Intermodal section but there was much more variety in the Specialist category.
Nene Trailers' Extendadek which is aimed at agricultural and plant engineering contractors, ranked alongside Miles Nunn's fork-lift transporter for other specialist hauliers.
Features include a tilting main deck to load over the neck, an opening rear frame and a special folding beavertail that gives a low 60 load angle.
There was a superbly engineered "Special Types" multi steering-axled low loader from Andover Trailers' trading partner Goldhofer.
Diverted from work to take part in the competition, it was built to an exacting specification in Bavaria for Hamilton Heavy haulier Cadzow. With animal transport welfare frequently hitting the headlines there was a surprising entry from the UK's main livestock transporter builder, Houghtons Parkhouse Coachwork.
Its Professional is a state-of-the-art tripletier design that has a hydraulic lift rather than ramps and offers fresh water, veterinary access and temperature and humidity control.
When operators require extraordinary trailers, engineers think laterally and produce some unusual designs as the Innovation section exemplifies.
Tidd Trailers Quick Load curtainsider has patented vertical and horizontal tensioners to give the sides a low drag effect.
The last of Clayton Commercial's triple entries was its Cargo Twin.
Ostensibly it's a normal pallet-carrying curtainsider but there are twin 13,500-litre tanks beneath the floor for carrying bulk edible or chemical products. Despite both barrels forming the main chassis beams tare weight is under 10.5 tonnes.
Another model of engineering dexterity was Wilson Double-Deck's City-Deck singledecker.
Designed for delivering into major continental city centres, it has a novel single
positive steer axle with raise/lower air suspension for off-loading at ground level.
The group also included two double entries; Don-Bur's Palletmaster brewery trailer with its flip-down extra floors and Maxilode's Extendaslide, Where innovation is concerned though, small bodybuilders can compete on level terms with larger manufacturers, Diminutive Volumaker Industries, for example, offered the latest trailer-based derivative of its bolt-up modular glass-fibre van body while Raven UK entered a sliding frame skeletal trailer with a familiar chassis locking device.
Called Double-C, the sections lock in place using pin and jaw mechanisms similar to those seen in fifth wheels.
With all the entries before them our panel of judges, all experts in their own particular fields, peered, pried and pondered and after much debate delivered their verdicts.
Which firms took the laurels in the different categories, and which is the overall winner?
All will be revealed at the prize-giving lunch on 20 September at the Grosvenor House hotel, London and in our issue of 28 September-4 October 1995.
E by Bryan Jarvis