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Speeding Deliveries at Night B ODYWORK incorporating a mechanical handling system
Page 55
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intended to overcome the difficulty of delivering goods in congested shopping areas has recently been built for H. J. Ryman. Ltd.
The company has a .number of retail stationery and office equipment shops, many in extremely difficult locations. As deliveries with the new vehicle were required to he carried out at night by a driver working alone, the body design features a I3urtonwood tail-lift and roller tracks inside the body to carry special stillages.
The driver will leave full stillages and take away empty ones from the previous delivery.
Basically the vehicle is a boxvan with a light alloy body built by Duramin Engineering (Lydney), Ltd., mounted on an Austin 7-ton chassis. L. F. Dove (C.V.), Ltd., of Croydon, supplied the complete vehicle and designed the special features of the body. Help in the design was given by T. H. Lewis, Ltd., of Watford and Express Dairy, Ltd., who used the same principles in their supermarket delivery vehicles.
The body structure and exterior panelling are of light alloy, with an interior
skinning of plywood and a translucent section in the forward part of the roof.
Running the full length of the body, in the centre of its width, there is a row of light alloy, channel-section vertical members. Brackets attached to these, 3 ft. 9 in. above the body floor, carry roller tracks on each side. Identical tracks are also mounted at the same height on the internal framework of the body sides. Tracks are also located on the body floor at the bottom of the sides and on both sides of the central pillars.
The layout gives two upper and two lower pairs of tracks and provides for the loading of four rows of stillages. Special stillages have been made for use on the vehicle. These have full-length sledgetype feet to match up with the spacings of the roller tracks. They measure 3 ft. 3 in. wide, 2 ft. 3 in. long and 3 ft. high. are collapsible and have a capacity of 5 cwt. of goods. Twenty-eight can be carried, seven in each row,
Four lines of roller tracks are also located in the upper face of the Burtonwood hydraulic tail-lift, *latching up wizh the tracks inside the body. The hydraulic pump for the tail-lift is driven by an electric motor mounted On the outside of the near-side chassis side member. This is to ensure that the level of noise will be kept to a minimum during the nighttime loading and unloading. To provide for the consequent heavier load on the _ batteries special heavy-duty Exide batteries are fitted.
Controls for the tail-lift are duplicated inside the rear of the body and are also fitted on the outside below the floor level. When loading or unloading stillages on the upper tracks the operator stands on the tail-lift and regulates its movements from the interior controls which are positioned in the middle of the two levels.
Stops are pivoted at suitable points along all eight roller tracks. The spacing of these stops is the length of the stillages and they are dropped down behind the stillages to prevent movement during delivery.
A light-alloy shutter closes the rear opening of the body. When raised this lies flat along the underside of the roof. The edge of the tail-lift is chamfered to facilitate loading of the stillages, which is carried out with the use of a specially made hydraulic lift truck. A simpler version of this truck is carried on the vehicle for the driver to use for unloading purposes.