Hessenatie trailers

Does anyone on the forum remember the Hessenatie tilts that used to come in unaccompanied to Harwich from Antwerp back in the late '70s. I worked for Coastal Roadways, initially behind The Orsett ■■■■ on the A13 but later in their depot at Crossways, West Horndon on the A127 and we used to collect the trailers from Harwich. Many of them were loaded with tractor parts for Ford Tractors in Basildon but some were for delivery around the country. I’m just wondering if anyone might remember and have (or can direct me to) pictures of them. I seem to remember that they had no lighting of their own (far cry from now!) and we used to carry our own light boards and cable for rear illumination, although I could be confusing them with other tilts. Any comments would be welcome.

Only this one does ring some bells

ERF-Continental. That’s the one I was thinking of. Thank you for posting the picture. I’ve been trying to find one throughout the internet but no luck until you came up with one!

ERF- Continental. That is definitely the tilts I was thinking of but, going by the A registration number of the Volvo, it’s probably a picture of a later version than the ones we used to pull on Coastal in the mid '70s. I can’t recall them being tri-axle trailers, I can remember them being tandem with spread axles and I’m sure we used to hook light boards on the back; that was only one stage earlier that the company I worked for after Coastal Roadways where we used to remove all bulbs and lenses when dropping a trailer or someone would help themselves! Boxes of bulbs, lenses and palm couplings took up the passenger floor! Thanks for your help!

If you look carefully at the photo, you can see the lighting-board lead looped through the rubbers down the side of the trailer. On traction work out of the docks that was normal well into the '80s, along with the lenses, bulbs, palm couplings etc etc The trailer is probably a '70s tilt anyway. Although tri-axles here became more common from '82 to be ready for 38t the following year, the Continent had been running tri-axles on super-singles for a good decade; and many cross-channel tilts had this configuration.

Les

Speaking from the continent: tri-axled trailers came in around late seventies, BUT double-tires
and the first single-tires came around mid eighties…and I did see quite some trailers around.

Speaking of HESSENATIE…NATIE in Belgian is a group of workers dedicated to load/unload cargo from/to vessels in Antwerp-harbour.

Many similar groups were formed with their own dedication and specialties:

Mexiconatie
Molenbergnatie
Katoennatie

MANY others with all their special strength: steel, paper, grain, cars…and
there HESSENATIE was also a strong partner

ERF-Continental:
Speaking from the continent: tri-axled trailers came in around late seventies, BUT double-tires
and the first single-tires came around mid eighties…and I did see quite some trailers around.

These pics are from 74/75 so the trailers are '74 or earlier :wink:

ERF demo.jpg
ERF NGC 001.jpg

Rowena, nice you’re around again and spicy as usual…the pics tell NOTHING about the time the picture was made
and TRAILOR had many stakes to highlight their venture “SAVOYARDE”-tridem…but before the market bought one
or many is another question.

ERF-Continental:
Rowena, nice you’re around again and spicy as usual…the pics tell NOTHING about the time the picture was made
and TRAILOR had many stakes to highlight their venture “SAVOYARDE”-tridem…but before the market bought one
or many is another question.

Absolute nonsense! The pics tell EVERYTHING: that’s why I posted them. There are thousands of pics of early/mid-70s tri-ax trailers on TruckNet, both with and without super-singles. The Trailor trailer was photographed by Truck Mag in 1975. I used to pull '70s Trailer 3-ax tilts for Dentressangle (see pic below). The other pic with super-singles was taken by a Dutch mag in '74 (it’s all on the ERF thread - you’ve seen it all before).

Les Sylphides’s post was correct. But actually, tri-axle super-single trailers have been about since the '60s (see Leyland pic below). Also, there’s a thread about those too! Here’s the link:

trucknetuk.com/phpBB/viewto … 5&t=169205

Springfield NMP.png

Glad you’re the old spicy lady here again!

ERF-Continental:
Glad you’re the old spicy lady here again!

Nearly as spicy as Macadam-Woman! :laughing:

mar21brspeterdaviessl1600-th.jpg
6a59cbd4298677c2db617b688fdcb591.jpg

These tri axles were a little later in the 80’s - have posted the pics previously on Bedfordshire thread.

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