Trailer to the prizes
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by Bryan Jarvis • Fourteen superbly built and immaculately turned out finalists in Commercial Motor's Trailer of the Year competition have undergone an examination by a panel of transport industry experts in our quest to find this year's top trailer.
The event, held two weeks ago at RARDA's proving ground in Surrey, reflected the general uplift in trailer manufacturing in recent times.
It also provided a detailed glimpse of many of the highquality trailers currently on offer, all designed to meet the haulier's needs and the product of good engineering practice and innovative design.
The competition attracted 36 entries from 25 mainly British manufacturers. The sponsors are Volvo Trucks, Groenevelcl, Truck-Lite, Thermo King, RO-R, Bendix and TIP Trailer Rentals.
From each section—Dry Freight Trailers; Bulkers (including tankers); Temperature Controlled; Specialist Trailers; and Innovation—three finalists were chosen.
Those competing in the Dry Freight section were Lawrence David with its well proven Traccess 90/38 pillarless curtainsider and a more recent 34 Euro pallet "Successor" Volumaster from M&G Tankers and Trailers.
Completing the trio was Wilson Double-Deck's European, a tried and tested twin decker capable of carrying huge amounts of roll cages or pallets.
There were two tipper semitrailers and a spirit tanker selected in the Sulker category. all typical examples of aluminium high-payload trailers for 38tonne work.
Weightlifter brought along one of its taper-bodied tippers while Don-Bur presented a Paylowda bulker, both familiar sights on the roads over the past decade.
By comparison, Thompson Carmichael's innovative 5000Series road tankers, which first appeared at this year's IRTE exhibition, is a mere babe.
Its novel construction lowers its tare down to 5.1 tonnes so that when coupled to a 6.0 tonne tractive unit, it's only a smidgin' away from a 27-tonne payload.
As expected, the Reefer section attracted a high-quality finish from three well-known names in the food-carrying industry.
Fraserborough-based Gray & Adams entered its highly innovative multi-temperature trailer with moving lateral dividers for maximum flexibility. It's one of 22 built for Holroyd Meek over the past seven months.
TCT presented one of the latest reefer boxes from Chereau in Fullers Transport livery while from the North East, Schmitz Cargobull (UK) showed a prime example of its Universal double deck for mixed loading.
There should have been three finalists in the Specialist sector but Trailmaster Trailers is in receivership and withdrew at the last minute.This left the field open to Andover Trailers and Nene Trailers.
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Superb example
Andover brought along a superb example of its Superlow step frame trailer. Rated at 41 tonnes, it's one from a structured range of low-loaders with gross trailer weights running from 20 to 73 tonnes according to the customer.
Nene presented its Recovertrail, a novel triple-rated (STGO Cat 1,2 and C&U) low-loader trailer.
With its shallow angle powered rear ramp system it is equipped for recovering low slung 12m double-decked coaches, laden eight-wheelers or carrying any vehicles of no more than 17 tonnes hut up to 29.5ft (15.2m) in length.
The Innovation category pro
&teed an excellent cross-section of the sort of lateral thinking that designers get up to at every level of the road transport industry. Don-Bur had a super example of one of its brewery trailers, equipped with Lazerloada internal crane to take the strain out of handling beer kegs. The one shown belongs to Marston's brewers.
Nene Trailers presented its answer to problems over safety faced by vegetable growers; a demountable body with a clever external mechanism to control the crop discharge from within, so noone needs to clamber about inside.
Even very small companies can succeed where innovation is concerned which explains why Transport Engineering Services was on parade with its unusual bus chassis transporter. TES is just a two-man operation but its two-deck coach carrier, complete with a brace of Dennis bus chassis, was rubbing shoulders with the industry big guns.
At the end of the judging our 10 panellists, all fleet engineers or buyers with years of experience behind them, were impressed but not overawed.
Much debate and discussion followed and then they delivered their verdicts.
To find out where the laurels went, who were the category winners and which entry is our overall Trailer of the Year, see the next issue of CM!