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Crane Fruehauf
Page 137
Page 138
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CRANE FRUEHAUF, Toftwood. Dereham, Norfolk.
ALL three of Crane Fruehauf s trailer manufacturing plants are in Norfolk — two at Dereham and the third at North Walsham. The company's East Anglian roots date back to the mid-19th century when William Crane first began building agricultural equipment there. A major step in the Crane company's development was when it won a large contract to make gun carriage wheels during the Boer War.
Subsequent steady growth eventually attracted the attention of the giant American Fruehauf corporation, which was then (and still is) the world's largest manufacturer of trailers.
A joint venture between Crane and Fruehauf began in 1964. Fourteen years later Crane Fruehauf was formed as Fruehauf s wholly owned UK subsidiary. Three other European subsidiaries, in France, West Germany and the Netherlands, had been established by then. Others. in Spain. Italy. Turkey and Yugoslavia have followed since.
Measured by product range. Crane Fruehauf continues to be Fruehauf's largest European division. Its three plants manufacture a wide range of trailers and semi-trailers, bodies for rigid vehicles and demountable systems. Though the two Dereham plants have separate addresses. at Toftwood and South Green, they lie only within half a mile of each other, straddling the town's by-pass.
Tankers and tipping semi-trailers used to be built at both these factories, but now South Green concentrates on low-loaders and special trailers for the armed forces, both for this country and overseas. The nature of this work means that much of it cannot be publicised, but one recent contract of which Crane Fruehauf was able to boast was to supply semi-trailer transporters for the British Army's new main battle tank, the Challenger. Tanker and tipping semi-trailers are now the specialities of the Toftwood plant. Materials used in tanker construction include mild steel, stainless steel, and aluminium alloy for customers carrying such products as petrochemicals, granulated substances, powders and foods. Insulated and heated Crane Fruehauf tankers are also available.
The tipper assembly line at Toftwood was extensively revised last year, at a cost of around £70,000, mainly to accommodate the company's new design of step-frame tipping semi-trailer (described in CM May 5, 1984), but also with an eye to the future introduction of UK national type approval for trailers. All the jigs used in the assembly of the old bathtub-type Fruehauf tipper have been replaced by jigs designed and built at Dereham.
These allow more complete, and thus fewer, sub assemblies to be welded before joining the main assembly line. The untidy looking continuous siderib welds of the early design have been replaced by neater, intermittent weld runs on the latest tippers, and no body strength has been sacrificed.
The tipper ram has been relocated to a 'doghouse' built into the front bulkhead of the latest aluminium alloy tipper body, and the ram's subframe has been made "as strong as stiff as we can make it", according to Crane Fruehauf s engineers.
This part of the redesign is an important element of this manufacturer's declared policy of making its tipping semi-trailers as stable as possible. A tilt test conducted at Chobham last year revealed that fully laden, a new Fruehauf tri-axle tipper would stay on its wheels on a slope of up to 7.5 deg from horizontal, allowing the manufacturer to claim better stability than its competitors. Crane Fruehauf's well established range of platform and platform derived semi-trailers such as skeletals and curtain siders is built at North Walsham. Dry freight, insulated and refrigerated van semi-trailers in both aluminium alloy and glass reinforced plastic are also assembled on this factory's modern production lines.
Since December 1979 this plant has been the proud owner of an approved ATP test chamber, which is used for testing and certifying refrigerated vehicles to the Accord Transport POrissables (the European agreement on the international carnage of perishable foodstuffs) standard. The operation of this test chamber, one of the few in the country. was fully described in CMFebruary 2, 1980. Crane Fruehauf is happy to contract out use of the ATP chamber to other manufacturers.
The company manufactures its own running gear, leaf-spring suspension components being built in this country and axles sourced from Fruehauf companies in mainland Europe (mainly France). But most Crane Fruehauf semi-trailers nowadays are specified with Rubery OwenRockwell running gear. This company's plant is at Llay, near Wrexham in North Wales. Like most semi-trailer manufacturers Crane Fruehauf has noticed a recent upsurge in demand for air suspension, particularly for tankers.
Since the introduction in 1982 of the Construction and Use Amendment which made either anti-lock brakes or load sensing mandatory on new trailers, Crane Fruehauf s policy has been to fit Lucas Girling Skidchek as standard, leaving cruder load sensitve apportioning valves as an option.
The three manufacturing plants' total workforce today is 800, but when the employees from Crane Fruehauf's after-sales network of seven branch centres is added that figure reaches 1,100.
One branch, Beeston in Norfolk, is where Crane Fruehauf s demountable body systems are now assembled. Two types are made—straight-lift and roll-off.
Demountable systems are frequently used in conjunction with drawbar, rather than articulated, vehicles and Crane Fruehauf has recently become more directly involved in this area in response to
growing operator interest. This is despite the Government's neglect of drawbars in the 38-tonne legislation.
A close-coupled drawbar system designed by Achermann-Fruehauf of West Germany to increase available deck length and thus load volume was introduced to the UK in 1981. That attracted some operator interest, but the mark four version of it, which was displayed at last year's 1RTE show, has gone several stages further and won some firm orders.
The first GLZ trailer (grossraum last zug — high volume truck/trailer) to be built at Dereham went into service with Sony (UK) last year.
Fruehauf has its own trailer rental company. Rentco, with a fleet of 3,000 plus semi-trailers in the UK at 24 sites. There are 18 Rentco sites in mainland Europe.