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Transamerica Leasing has ordered 100 discbraked trailers including 50 running on Discos axles developed by Hendrickson and DaimlerBenz. The discs have done well in early trials; Transamerica is now confident that by 2000 they will be a standard item on UK semis...
by Robin Meczes
• Transamerica Leasing is to order 100 disc-braked trailers from a variety of bodybuilders as part of its evaluation of disc brake technology.
The move, which will cost it around £2.25m, follows smallscale trials with the technology over the past year. So far, says David Howarth, director of operations and engineering for Europe, the results have all been good news. "There have been no technical problems and we haven't picked up any safety related issues," he says.
Technology
"We were confident this technology was doing what we thought it was going to do," Howarth adds, "so we took a view that we needed to get into a wide-scale evaluation programme."
The triaxle trailer mix will comprise about 40% curtainsid, ers, 30% reefers, 20"/o tilts and 10% others, says Howarth, The order will include about 40 bodies from Montracon in the UK, with the others coming from Van Hool of Belgium, Schmitz in Germany and either Chereau of France or Mirofret of Spain.
About half of the 100 trailers will run on Discos disc-braked axles supplied by the Hendrickson,Daimler-Benz part nership, with another 40 or so from Mentor and five each from SAF and BPW. HendricksonDaimler-Benz is supplying the Discos system for the same price as conventional drumbraked alternatives, says Howarth, and Mentor is charging .C200-300 more per axle than for drums. SAF and BPW are both charging the more usual premium of about £1,200 an axle. "Hendrickson has been very supportive," he adds.
Final specification for the axles and trailers is expected to be in place by the end of March, with deliveries starting around eight weeks later.
Transamerica hopes to distribute the disc-braked trailers at no extra cost to high-mileage customers, says Howarth. "We'll put them out to those we think will do some mileage to get feedback more quickly."
The evaluation is scheduled to last 12 months although Howarth expects more trailers to be taken on board before that if things work out well, and the company could easily have 300 disc-braked semis in its fleet by the end of this year, he says.
The evaluation programme is not about the technology itself, but its costs. "The safety issue is pretty well documented," says Howarth. "I don't think there's any doubt about that. The issue is lifetime costs. There is no real data on this so far for trailers." If the promised savings in maintenance costs materialise, he says, there could be a net saving on trailer running costs of up to 25%. Howarth promises that these savings will be passed on to Transamerica's customers.
And he is confident that the evaluation will provide positive feedback.
"I believe this is a way forward for the industry purely on the safety issue," he says. "By 2000, I think disc brakes will have become standard specification for trailers."
Partnership
Axles from the HendricksonDaimler-Benz partnership will be produced at Daimler-Benz's Kassel plant in Germany, with suspension systems built at Hendrickson's Northampton factory. Assembly will take place at both sites, depending on customer location, and at Hendrickson's Montpellier plant in France.
Production capacity currently stands at 30,000 units a year in Kassel and 20,000 units a year in Northampton but both sites are already investing in more equipment to meet anticipat ed demand. Hendrickson/ Daimler-Benz intends to win around 30% of Europe's market for trailer axles (currently around 330,000 units/year), says Frank Dumeier, manager of the trailer axles division at Kassel "In my opinion, I think we can realise this in four years," he says, "and that's just with disc brake technology—no drums."
The Discos axles will weigh slightly more than traditional drum axles at around 510kg each, says Hendrickson Europe marketing manager Terry Green, but with good reason.
"We're not prepared to compromise on reliability of the product to save on the weight," he explains. This is one of the reasons he is confident of the success of the project. "We have no fears," says Green. "I would have much greater fears it I was supplying a lighter weight product. My feeling is that trailer disc brakes are going to come into the UK market a lot quicker than people think."