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"In designing our Automount swop system, we dared to step where angels fear to tread," says managing director Mr Phil Davies. The system is sophisticated— some would say complicated. But the primary aim, of making the demount and pick-up operations entirely automatic, with the driver controlling every function via a push-button panel in the cab, was achieved by the designers.
Breakthrough
The big break-through, of course, was to fold the body legs automatically. The rear ones swing up and inboard using cables, while the front legs fold up and back as they make contact with guide rails bridging the rear wings. Claimed turnround time : "two minutes flat."
W. E. & F. Dobson Ltd, Colwick Industrial Estate, Nottingham.
Dobson's T41 four-ram clear-lift system is liked for its simplicity and sound design, using fixedlength hinge-down legs straightforward vertical rams and this lock corner fixings. The hydraulics are based on Dobson's mining industry experience. As an option to the original ptodriven pump the company now offers a more orthodox electrohydraulic power-pack.
At the 1974 Earls Court show, Dobson unveiled its Super Contact single-ram design which conforms to the ramp-rail principle pioneered in Germany by Ackermann. Interchangeability with rival ramp-rail equipment is claimed, after certain modifications.
Freightaids Ltd, Studland Road, Northampton.
This company produces clear-lift swop-body equipment in kit form, enabling established bodybuilders to offer demountables to its existing customers, retaining its own well-tried designs of van or dropside superstructure. The lifting equipment comes in two selfcontained " saddle " assemblies into which are built the vertical lifting rams and hold down twist-locks. They straddle the chassis lorigitudinals.
A choice of body types can be built on to the floor frame sup plied, which incorporated the folddown support legs. The leg design is simple and foolproof, with a diagonal stay which doubles as A locating pin, plugging 'in to one of six holes, so determining the effective length of leg.
Freight Bonallack Ltd, Fifers Lane. Norwich, Norfolk.
Now produced at the company's Wakefield factory, the Loadspeeder clear-lift equipment from Freight Bonaliack continues in much the same form as the original design; the spherical lifting ram leads locate in large conical recesses below the body to achieve alignment. Small nonswivelling castor wheels on the ends of the legs permit this alignment. The dirt and spraycollecting body-securing turnbuckle clamps on the outer
faces of the chassis frame have been replaced (for new users only, of course) with more orthodox ISO-style twistlocks. They locate in corner casting sockets at the extreme outer corners of the body or at longitudinal centres compatible with Freightliner/SCIDS operation.
A new support leg is currently being designed which will, says Freight Bonallack, reduce the mounting/dernounting procedure.
Hazlemere Motor Co (Waltham Abbey) Ltd, Waltham Abbey, Essex.
Two different clear-lift systems are offered by Hazlemere. The simplest type.-A design is purely mechanical in operation, using modified semi-trailer landing legs which are " plugged-in " to rave sockets. The type-C has a hydraulic power-pack on the chassis and support legs currently being modified in design so that they fold away flush within the side raves.
With the addition of four rams, lifting beams (four long coil springs on each assist lowering) and a power-pack/control-box, type-A can be converted to typeC. Chassis-body alignment is accomplished through a horizontal wheel on the back of the chassis locating in a central channel below the body floor.
Pengco Transport Systems Ltd, Oxney Road, Peterborough.
Based originally on a German Ackermann design, the Load-0Matic set the trend to ramp-rail demountables in Britain, and Pengco now claims to be Europe's largest swop system manufacturer. A number of modifications and improvements have been made in the past three years or so; lifting forces are reacted against the ground rather than creating bending loads in the chassis.
Simpler and less costly rear legs are available on lighter chassis. Air suspension provides an alternative means of lifting above rigid chassis rear axles and for trailer installations. Two-up semitrailer installations as well as more sophisticated drawbar types are listed.
A. C. Penman Ltd, Heathhall,
Dumfries, Scotland.
Over 70 years making swop bodies, and "still going strong," is Penman's claim. In recent years the company has made its mark with the fixed ramp system, which requires permanent land(or depot-) based rails at every point where bodies need to be dropped, the chassis backing between the rails to demount. Protruding rollers at rave level ride up the rails to raise the body clear of the chassis.
Penman's "swop anywhere" systems rely on hydraulics, either hand or electrically powered. They are of the clear-lift type using either two or four lifting rams and turnbuckle hold-down clamps. Penman builds all its own body superstructures; this enables the designers to integrate the demountable base frame into the body, optimising strength and weight.
Ray Smith Demountables Ltd, West End Road, Maxey, Peterborough.
Potential interchangeability with other systems is the feature of Ray Smith's equipment which has enabled what started as a one-man company in 1972 to grow to its position as a leading supplier today. The original RS ramp-rail system was and is able to interchange with Pengco and the now-defunct Ronway and Reynolds Boughton designs, provided there is dimensional compatibility on body length and axle positions—the RS equipment being tailored accordingly.
Twistlocks are an RS feature which the company "insists on"
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Pro and contra
Michael Foot's decision to give ACAS the job of recommending whether the Road Haulage Wages Council should live or die is going to produce some fascinatingly opposed views, and it will also loom large in the personal careers of several people engaged, in one sense or another, in industrial relations.
For instance, Ken Jackson, the TGWU's commercial services national secretary, has -been a key man in the union's call for the abolition of the Wages Council. He retires in June and, although it seems doubtful if ACAS will have completed its inquiries by then, there's no doubt that he would regard it as a fitting end to his long career as a trade union negotiator if ACAS came out strongly for abolition.
On the other hand, Prof John Wood, the present chairman of the Wages Council, is understood to favour its continuance. He iis in an interesting situation—having recently been appointed chairman of the Central Arbitration Committee, one of the key institutions of the Employment Protection Act. If his CAC duties turned out to be very onerous he might wish to resign from the Wages Council. As it is, his views and those of his academic colleagues on the Council will have to be considered carefully by the ACAS team.
Abnormal noble
Some hauliers get tricky jobs —even those who are used to them: One of the most awkward I've recently heard about is to be undertaken by Heavy Haulage Ltd, of Crewe Road, Haslington, Cheshire. They have the marathon task of transporting the oldest Viscount airliner in existence on the long road journey from Speke Airport, Liverpool, to the Duxford Airfield Museum in Cambridgeshire.
The firm's m.d., D. B. Wood, said recently : "This is not the biggest job we've ever done, but it is certainly one of the most difficult. The plane's fuselage cannot be chained down to the transporter so we shall have to be very, very careful.