The seasonal stocking of storage warehouses, shops and restaurants is
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always hectic—the last thing anyone worries about is the condition of truck or trailer floors. But now the rush is over and it's time to sort out any remedial work. CMasked some specialist repairers to share the tricks of the trade.
istribution fleets need to build up a head of steam around November, or even earlier in some cases, in preparation for Christmas. They bring in extra trailers on contract from rental companies to boost their fleets in the run-up to the season of jollity and "shop till you drop". Inevitably the furore surrounding the millennium made this seasonal peak particularly frantic, but there's always a downside—not least in the amount of repair work needed afterwards, either from heavy wear and tear or accidental damage.
So for many hauliers the new millennium is starting like every other new year: getting the trailer fleet sorted in time for the next big business flurry at F3Ster.
Extensive trailer floor r clurbishing is rarely carried out in isolation, It's usually handled by a manufacturer's service arm and is the very last item on the agenda after the shot blasting, the air piping, re-wiring and a respray. Along with a bit of re-engineering or major repairs, it can be part of an extremely interesting job card.
Take the double-decker which is currently in the Don-Bur Service workshop at Longton. near Stoke-on-Trent. It's two years old with a fixed upper deck and is one of a large batch built for Great Mills over the past couple of years.
Langton is where the bulk of D-BS's refurbishing programmes are carried out along with chassis, trailer and truck cab conversions, and fitting its stylised air management systems along with curtains, load restraint systems and new graphics.
The double-decker in question has been involved in a rather unfortunate mishap. causing so much damage that the chassis needs straightening and much of its superstructure has to be rebuilt. With its mangled upper frame, what's left of the floor needs lifting and replacing anyway.
The bulk of the work involves replacing entire roof sections, the front bulkhead and its supporting frame, the extra pillars over the neck for the second deck and all five side pillars.
With the damaged framework cleared away, the chassis is first pulled back into shape and then re-aligned. With the new superstructure in place, the chassis shot-blasted, re-sprayed, re-wired and piped up, the trailer is ready for its new floor.
Rather less work is needed to sort out a brewer's dray that came in at the same time. Its main wooden floor has been damaged by impacts and abrasion from barrels and crates, but not so badly that it needs replacing. Instead the splintered sections are removed and the whole floor is covered with a sacrificial 9.omm ply panel. It's a cheap, acceptable solution that shields the main floor and offers a fairly high co-efficient of friction; the last thing a dray driver needs is a slippery floor that lets the load slide around on corners.
Removing old floor screws is a messy job; they rarely come out cleanly so they need either chiselling out, grinding, drilling or simply punching through. The usual way to secure new panels is to use self-threaders fed through fresh holes drilled in the cross-bearers, or to save time, screws with a drill-bit tip and a thread cutting shank.
With many trailers released from seasonal contracts, Boalloy's re-manufacturing branch at Parkhouse Industrial Estate in Stoke also has a lot of refurbishing work in hand. Some involves replacing the odd damaged floor section, usually at the rear or around the sides; others get a complete overlay.
In general though, most get the full monty." says Boalloy group technical director Graham Potter. This entails shot-blasting, a repaint and new curtains, but it could include stretching the chassis or even raising the roof. All of these tasks are listed in M&G's menu of fixed price repair work; all the customer has to do is tick off what he wants.
On the new-build side, more and more curtainsider trailers are coming out of M&G fitted with Wisatrans ply panels with a nonslip surface, while boxvans usually have laminated block hardwood floors called Safadek or Lamidek. These come in 13.6mx305mm sections.
To save weight some, like those built at M&G for Dodds Transport. have interlocking aluminium extruded floor planks; Tesco has gone a stage further by using Normanton's bonded aluminium chequer plate on ply board, rather than a phenolic covering.
Flange widths
Heavy duty trailer applications require a 28/29mm-thick floor covering but the ply board must be laid carefully to give it the inherent strength needed to counter fork-lift damage. The ply comes in 3.0x1.5ni panels but suppliers like Schauman will produce customised floor kits, cut to suit your crossmember pitch, main beam and flange widths. You could cut your own, of course, but buying a kit saves time.
Most rigid trucks have 18, 21 arid 24rnmthick non-slip floors, but on 7.5-tormers used on parcels work, and where fork-lifts aren't involved, even i5mm panels might well be adequate, depending on the pitches of the cross-members.
Ideally, says Potter, ply boards should be sealed around the edges to stop any de-laminating through water ingress. Hardwood doesn't need this treatment but you can always add a bead of sealant such as Sika flex between the boards.
Mackworth Bodyworks, part of the Lex Commercials group, is having a slow start to the manufacturing year according to bodyshop manager Ken Insley, but the amount of repair work is beginning to pick up. "Of course the decision to raise the bank rate isn't helping us any," he says.
Mackworth concentrates on rigids but it does carry out trailer repairs from time to time. The most common choice for most boxvan or curtainsider floors is wood composite or softwood planks or panels; more expensive and heavier hardwood sections are relatively rare in trailers but tend to be used more in rigids.
The composite panels are most commonly supplied in 30 omm-wide strips but many other sizes are available. Ply board conies in varying thicknesses and coatings, depending on the application, but usually in 1.22x2.44m sections.
"Mackworth regularly fixes plastic non-slip coated panels into damaged floors," says Insley. "Wisatrans and Rhinodeck are both popular choices but we're using a lot less hardwood panels."
Much of the damage encountered by Mackworth's repairers is caused by supermarket roll cages or heavy fisted fork-lift operators, but in the aftermath of Christmas and the millennium there's a lot of accident damage too. When it comes to floors it usually pays to patch or overlay the worst area with new, slightly thinner panels.
Lawrence David isn't keen on using too much hardwood says Reg Hilson, manal director of its body repair division. Bu believes that hardwood panels on full-lei 305mm (r2in) bearers, while more expen than some other materials, are still the n cost-effective option. A full refurb can around £5,000 and a hardwood floor a about L1,000 which, Nilson argues, is ( Li25 a year over an eight year service life.
"That's more expensive than, say Wisadeck floor," he says, "but remember plywood panels must match up with bearers below—you can't let them mee mid-air."
It's not only the manufacturers who a( cate careful speccing of trailer fib Operators such as Soham, C,ambridgesh based AA Gregg, which specialises in haul valuable print rolls, know full well that state of the floor is critical.
Costly item
A badly worn flow can allow the rolls to s and if even one becomes damaged it prove a very costly item. Fleet engineer 1 King is another advocate of plywood ()I lays; this is usually handled in the a pany's workshop.
Eddie Stobart also gets serious when comes to trailer floors. The i,000 Boal Tautliners recently purchased are based Sam ro chassis with 34mm laminated ha wood floors and aluminium omega stri The cross-members are set at 30011 cross bearers.
But during the past couple of years Stok has also spent a lot of money strengthenin large number of trailers; adding extra cr bearers and laying down either Keruing laminated hardwood floors. "Now their sp run at 3oomm from the tail to the bogie a from there to the front at 350mm," says fl engineer Mark Jones. Whenever floor pan need to be replaced they're knocked ( and a new one spliced in, he says, addin "We prefer to screw the boards down, a not with self-tappers either."
• by Bryan Jarvis