Lawrence David's quick-stripper
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• An unusual sliding-roof curtain-sided semi-trailer, built by Lawrence David of Peterborough for Harrogate operator Houseman International Haulage, is helping to reduce loading and unloading time on Continental trips, compared with conventional tilt bodywork. Instead of having to strip the curtains and superstructure down for top loading, the driver simply turns a crank handle at the base of the front bulkhead. This draws the roof open from the rear, taking with it the rear header rail and bunching the fabric as it slides, to leave clear, uninterupted access through the rear opening.
The curtainsider trailer bodywork is based on a standard Trac-Cess design, but with top rails of steel instead of aluminium, and two fixed offset side posts for increased rigidity. Top curtain support is by cross rails on rollers. Houseman has already bought two of the easy access trailers. Flexible plastic strips Flexible plastic strips overlap the curtain top edges to form a weatherseal, and there is also a rain channel built into the top track.
Houseman's sliding roof semi-trailers weigh around 6.5 tonnes, and with three-axled Daf 3300 3600ATi, or Scania R112/R142 tractive units, provide payloads in excess of 23 tonnes.
They are mainly used to carry steel coils from Sheffield to Italy and Spain, but have also shown time-saving benefits on conventional curtainsider work on domestic routes.