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Two-container side-loading artic
Page 26
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• Two Load-O-Matic 18ft demountable' containers are carried on the prototype of a semi-trailer, demonstrated on Tuesday in London by the makers, Pengco (Transport Systems) Ltd, Oxney Road, Peterborough. The vehicle is equipped with three lifting' arms or davits that are used to load and unload the containers one at a time. It is based on a converted York 40ft semi-trailer and is of the type shown by the company in model form at Earls Court as part of a system providing for the transfer of the two containers at a depot or site to local-delivery rigid vehicles fitted with Load-O-Matic demountable-body equipment. A fully equipped trailer (without containers) costs £6500.
The system is known as the Pengco Load-O-Matic LMS-6 and the vehicle can carry a payload of 18 tons as a 30-ton-gross outfit or 20 tons as a 32-ton machine, the overall weight of the semi-trailer being a little over 7 tons.
Three triangular-shaped davits are employed, the central one being used in conjunction with either of the other two. Hydraulic power is provided by a pump driven by a Briggs and Stratton auxiliary petrol engine; it could be supplied by an electro-hydraulic pack plugged into the mains.
The principle of operation represents an original concept in that the lifting arm is pulled rather than pushed to its outer position by a double-acting horizontal hydraulic ram. And this distributes the stresses more uniformly than is normally possible in the case of push-operated arms and enables the weight of the gear to be reduced. Only two rams are required to operate the loading gear of each davit.
In the first stage of operation a boom incorporating a hinge-mounted stabilizing leg is moved outwards by the side ram. The leg is released manually and a link-and-peg mechanism automatically locks it in the vertical position. Wire-rope slings that are linked to an extendible mast, operated by a double-acting ram in the mast section, are attached to the four corners of the container. After the container has been lifted clear of the vehicle chassis the side ram is operated in the reverse direction and pulls the arm outwards about its pivot, which is located below the chassis in line with the vehicle's outer wheels.
Manually operated fold-down legs support the container in its lowered position in readiness for collection by a Load-O-Matic rigid vehicle. Lining up the semi-trailer for loading is facilitated by a spring-loaded sensing arm mounted at the front of the chassis that operates a warning light when a roller at the end of the arm contacts the front container. The system could readily be applied to vehicles carrying two 20ft ISO containers if an overall trailer length of 15im were permitted.
In a talk to the Press before the demonstration, Mr Ray Smith, Pengco's sales manager, forecast that large transport co-operatives would come into being, the participating members of which could each have their goods transported with fewer vehicles, less capital investment and, it was to be hoped, with much greater efficiency. This trend has been given impetus by the 1968 Transport Act which had listed licensing restrictions that previously inhibited interchange of operations between companies under different ownership.
It was now abundantly clear said Mr Smith, that no substantial improvement in transport productivity could be achieved until waiting time was reduced. The demountable-body system offered a waiting time advantage in many applications that no other system could provide.