TRANSPORT BY TRANSFERABLE BODY.
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The Transferable Body Has Not Yet Come Into Such General Use as Its Undoubted Good Points as a Time and Money-saver Warrant.
OF NOTHING is it more true than of transport, that "-keeping everlastingly at it brings success." The chief function of a vehicle.is to carry goods. When it is standing still it is not carrying them, and thus it has ceased to be a vehicle. Every moment stationary is a moment lost, so far as the earning capacity of the wagon is concerned, and this holds true whether non-running .periods are avoidable, being due to bad management or inefficiency. or unavoidable on account Of loading and unloading. A good deal of thought has been given to the question of shortening these terminal delays (although it is -doubtful whether the average vehicle proprietor is as keenly alive to the importance of this aspect of transport efficiency as the subject demands), and as a result various means have been devised whereby the necessary operation of providing a "vehicle with its:paying load may be shortened. Chief amongst these ineans comes the transferable body of which we propose to 'discuss some aspects here.
One of the earliest examples of the use of the removable container that has come within the writer's ken was in connection with passenger luggage on the cross-Channel routes to the Continent. The (late) South Eastern_ and Chatham Railway Co. has made use of such an arrangement for the past 30 years. The containers, three in number, were mounted on a flat truck and, after loading at Charing Cross, sealed up. They were transferred to the ship at Folkestone or Dover under the crane and
again, at the other side, transferred to the Conti, nental train. Here the idea had a two-fold purpose : to save delay in transhipment and to facilitate the operation of custams control.
Container, or transferable, bodies had been similarly used by other railway companies both -in
this country and the U.S.A. for a number of years before road transport came to be considered a feasible proposition at all, and it therefore seems natural that it is the railway companies themselves who were also the first to attempt to adapt this method of timesaving to the new transport.
In so far as their limited road powers permitted, the railway companies have, from time to time, made tentative experiments with containers that could be quickly transferred from lorry to train and vice versa, and no doubt if they ever succeed-in getting Parliament to grant them extended load transport powers they will be in possession of such data as will enable them quickly to put into operation a workable scheme.
To the haulier the problem is not quite the same.
Whereas the railwayman sees in road transport only a feeder to his system, and therefore makes.transferability from road to rail a sine qua non, the haulage contractor is chiefly interested in the time-saving features of the suggestion, the saving of transhipment costs being, of secondary importance-to him.
Now, atathe outset, he is up against a. difficulty. The transferable body lacks, to a certain extent, the flexibility enjoyed by the more general usage of a fixed body individually loaded. It, follows that it is not well adapted to jobbing, which forms such a great part of the work of many haulage contractors. For. instance, if a man gets a contract to take a load of . furniture from a house in one town to one in the next it is not of much avail for him to utilize the container system, since, if only one load were to be ' carried, the lorry would have to wait to take back the body, and it is doubtful if any loading and offloading facilities would exist at , either end. .
On the other hand, where a man has a regular contract for carrying goods more or less similar in nature, it will be found that the container system offers very important advantages both in the time and money that may be saved by its use.
Containers and transferable bodies are not exactly the same thing, although each type embodies the same principle. The container usually forms only part of the complete load on the lorry, several such making up a full load. The transferable body, on the other hand, usually contains the whole of the useful vehicle load. Both have their special use and both are adaptable to a wide range of transport requirements. -Thecontainer is, of course, eminently suited to those situations where the vehicles are covering more or less regular routes discharging and taking on freight at intermediate points. 7f, for instance, one has to make the run from London to Coventry via Dunstable and Rugby, and to carrY regular loads for the two intermediate places and also loads from these places to the terminal points, then a system of containers will, by shortening stopping times, effect big savings. Not only can the containers be entirely dosed and sealed, thus.preventing pilferage from, and damage to, delicate goods, but, by intelligent staff work, the delays en route can be reduced ,to an absolute minimum.
An important point in connection with containers is that they should be built as lightly as possible, since their tare weight has to be deducted from the useftil load that the lorry can legally carry. For this reason attempts have lately been made to introduce containers made out of duralumin, which is a very strong and light aluminium alloy. A well-known firm in Dart-ford, Kent, has specialized in this class of container and been successful in producing a skip that is stronger and more serviceable than the old-fashioned wood and iron construction. It is claimed for these that, owing to reduction in tare weight, they save their first cost after 15 months of service.
The transferable body proper, owing to its greater range of adaptability, shows much greater variation in type than does the container. Depending upon the class of freight that it may be called upon to carry, it may vary all the way from a simple lift van for furniture to a semi-trailer, which, with the tractor portion, forms the lately introduced six-wheeler. The desiderata in any transferable body are reasonable lightness, strength, proper adaptability to the • loading and off-loading facilities available at both ends of the journey, and a, secure and rapid means of attachment and detachment to the wagon chassis.. As regards lightness, this, whilst important, is not of such paramount importance as in the case of the container where the tare weight tends to be greater in proportion to the useful load owing to the compartmenting thus set up. In this connection it must be remembered that a lift body which has to be handled under a crane, with its full load inside it, cannot be built as lightly as a rigidly attached body except at the sacrifice of essential strength. A compromise has to be effected between these two conflicting qualities.
Adaptability to the loading facilities at the terminal stations is a very important point. A lift van that • can only be craned on and off is of very little use unless cranes exist at* both ends of the journey. Similarly, a transferable body adapted to be run on and off the chassis is not a-., feasible proposition unless loading platforms at chassis height are available. The photos accompanying this article show a lift van fitted to a Super-Sentinel steam wagon which is provided with two alternative methods of handling. Lifting eyes are fitted for use under the crane, whilst the entire body is mounted on small wheels, running on Skefko ball bearings and adapted to co-operate with a system of tracks and guide rails on the top of the chassis. It will be noticed, again, that short ramp platesare also fitted to deal with any slight variation of loading-platform height. The use of ball bearings enables these bodies to be shifted with a minimum of effort—two men easily performing this duty even when the body is fully laden. The photos also show clearly the method adopted for securing the body in place on the chassis. A long pin passes through eye plates on the vehicle and corresponding plates depending from the body. This secures the body in front. At the rear a system of wedge bars is arranged to enter holes • in two • further eye plates on the body, the action of the • device being not only to hold the body securely in a longitudinal direetion, but also to draw it down on to the. chassis and thus prevent rattle and chatter when the vehicle is in motion.
It is the writer's firm conviction that the future will see a very greatly extended use of transferable bodies. As legislation is introduced to allow of heavier axle weights, thus freeing designers from some of their present handicaps, and a8 road transport becomes better organized, so that the vehicles come to run more and more on regular route8, road haulage concerns will recognize the great money and time-saving fea,tures inherent in the transferable body. system. Vehicles, then, may quite likely be fitted with.their own loading devices, power operated, so as to make them independent of station facilities in this respect, and then even the humble job of moving a
family from one end of a town to the other may be carried out by a vehicle so fitted.