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WHERE TRAILERS
Page 64
Page 65
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NEED TO BE TOUGH by Gordon Crabtree
EVEN before the days of ping-pong diplomacy, UK manufacturers of semitrailers were interested in the Far East as a market for their products. Several well-known and long-established companies, in the main manufacturers of heavy-duty tailor-made trailers, have for a good many years had their eyes on this vast area of the globe.
Only in recent times has the potential depth of orders for this type of transport equipment been appreciated. This realization is timely for Japanese plants are being geared up now in preparation to break into this lucrative market, and by virtue of geography alone they are admirably placed to command a major share of the available business. There is little doubt that British, European and American manufacturers of heavy-duty trailer equipment for use in Ceylon, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, China and other countries are going to encounter stiff competition from Japan and, in all probability in the 1980s, from plants in the Soviet Union.
These are the challenges faced by heavy trailer manufacturers like Crane Fruehauf Trailers Ltd and R. A. Dyson and Co Ltd. The former company is at present engaged on an extensive drive in Far Eastern markets as part of its expansion policy for export products. An important part of this effort will be the sale of the company's pole trailer. This is available in either fifth-wheel or drawbar versions and is particularly suitable for off-the-road applications. Many are now in operation in African Equatorial forests and the initial results of Crane Fruehauf's investigations for the use of this pole trailer in places like Malaysia, Indonesia and Borneo, where timber is one of the big export industries, are extremely promising.
If this market has been marked for future export effort by Crane Fruehauf, the company that would willingly endorse this promising outlook from a point of view of many years' practical experience is undoubtedly R. A. Dyson and Co Ltd whose managing director, Mr Tom Pollard, is probably the top salesman of tailor-made trailers for use in the logging industry, in the transportation of heavy transformers for electric power projects, and the laying of oil pipelines, girders and railway sleepers in this area of the world. Earlier this year Mr Pollard returned from a sales tour of Malaysia which took in Singapore and Indonesia. While confirming the increased competitive danger in this sphere of equipment from Japan, Mr Pollard spoke to me with confidence about the rapidly growing economy of the area and the demand in particular for pole trailers for use in the huge forests of Malaysia and Indonesia.
There is little doubt that the Malaysian timber industry is in the middle of a boom period which is likely to continue well into the 1980s. Since around 1960, according to Mr Pollard, the production of sawn timber has doubled, and over the decade to 1970 the production of logs—which is the more important from the point of view of the requirement of heavy transporter trailer units—has trebled and the volume of exports more than quadrupled.
Malaysian prospects
That there is scope for British producers of trailers, particularly in logging and oil fields, can be appreciated bearing in mind the fact that in the first 10 months of 1970 the Malaysian Government approved a total of 280 investment applications with a potential value of $M1310million, quit apart from Government spending.
Equally important are the aims t streamline government machinery for imple menting investment projects and th attraction of more private capital int Malaysia. This must mean that numerou opportunities exist for the export c British-made trailers and tractive units, i addition to other largely heavy-dut commercial vehicle equipment not only i Malaysia and Indonesia but in other areas the Far East.
Oil industry's hopes
British transporter units have high sal( possibilities in the new Federation's c industry. Although Malaysia's oil industr is still in its infancy there are high hopes fi the development of offshore oil which hr been discovered in great abundanci Sarawak Shell's interests have becorr concentrated on the possibilities of offshoi oil finds which comprise the whole I Sarawak's continental shelf.
In supplying trailers for use in oil pipelir transportation in this area as well as for ti logging industry in Malaysia, Dyso specializes in the production of a unitize tractor bodywork incorporating swivellir bunk; logging bogies in ranges from 8 to 4 tons; logging bogie outfit equipment wit chain-controlled sliding scotches and draw by a Leyland Hippo or Scammell tractii unit; 20 tons capacity extending pole-tyr drawbar trailer; 18 tons logging bogie wit single-type rubber-mounted springs; hinge fall-away stakes with Esco releases; an 20-ton extending pole-type semi-trailer.
The company also has a 25-ton capacii self-loading semi-trailer coupled to Constructor with oilfield body, a Dysc on model low-bed semi-trailer which is operation in the Far East in large tbers, and a Scammell /Dyson pipe sporting outfit in operation throughout oilfields of Indonesia. Popular in istan is the Dyson 70,000lb capacity bed semi-trailer operating with a nmell Constructor.
)yson, in fact, has built a considerable itation in supplying logging bogies, ers or semi-trailers on the basis of their ;hness and durability.
Lnother company which has achieved d results in this area is John Green ineering, of Kettering, Northants. A ure of the Green Trailers design is the degree of inter-changeability of basic mblies between models, which is made fible by the modular construction pted. This enables the firm to be flexible iroducing a unit tailored closely to the omer's requirements, but at the same using standard basic components to do thus keeping manufacturing costs n.
or example, it would be quite feasible to I a trailer for use in rough conditions, t as exist in most of the Far Eastern kets, by taking standard swan-neck and dard deck assemblies and providing ;jai rear-deck assembly designed to nnmodate extra-large section tyres and ecial suspension.
ni -low -loaders
Ls consulting engineers the firm is able to ride any type of trailer, particularly ;e required for special purposes that fall ide the more normal production types. n Green has recently prepared proposals a new range of semi-low-loader trailerc, xi on the present low-loader design, specifically aimed at overseas markets including the Far East. The company has prepared detailed drawings for a tandem-axle semi-low-loader for shipment overseas.
Another company with its eye on the Far East as a market is Brockhouse Export Ltd, of West Bromwich, which is supplying and quoting for a range of container skeletal trailers for ISO containers or chassis to be equipped with either platforms or bodywork. Officials of Brockhouse, however, make no bones about pointing out that there exist numerous problems in exporting products of the size of trailers and their tractive units to a "deep sea" market. Freight costs which are the basis of the problem are levied in a number of forms, the most common being on the gross weight or the cubic capacity of the article, whichever is the greater.
However, there are two ways of reducing these high freight costs, each of which involves reducing the cubic capacity of the trailers. This can be done by shipping in either a fully knocked-down condition or a part knocked-down condition and arranging for local assembly and the fitting of the bodywork. If the fully knocked-down condition method is adopted then this will result in little assembly work for home-based workshops. Possibly the best method, and the one which Brockhouse has adopted, is a part-knocked-down condition consisting of trailer chassis and other components packed for local assembly; the chassis is then fully assembled in the market and bodywork fitted to customer's exact specification.
Brockhouse claims that this has not only reduced trailer export freight costs and the total cost of the products but that it also allows for greater flexibility in the type of bodywork which can be fitted.
Arduous road route Arrow Construction Equipment Ltd is another trailer company looking to the Far East as a market for its equipment. Although at the present time the farthest. east its trailers have been shipped is to Iran, there is, however, great potentiality for its semi-platform units and Arrow tiltingplatform trailers.
Many of the former are now engaged on hauling bulk carpet loads from Tehran to Hamburg along an arduous road route and one that easily finds any faults in trailer assembly and construction, while the latter are used extensively in Britain and parts of the Near East for the rapid transit of contractors' plant.
Talking of the Far East export potential, Mr D. C. Cowans, general sales manager, told me: "In many cases the freight costs, particularly when equipment has to be hauled round the Cape, precludes any chance of our exporting this equipment particularly to those markets where there are already local manufacturers,.. such as exist in Australasia. However, we are currently carrying out an extensive campaign on sales of our equipment in the Far East and our personnel are covering that part of the world at this very time, visiting agents and potential distributors in South East Asia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Japan."