As some of you long timers on here may recall I together with 2 other TN members are involved with a charity that takes humanitarian aid to Kosovo twice a year.
We have heard rumours that the Germans and the Austrians have or are about to introduce new laws regarding truck and trailers that are allowed to transit their countries and these could affect our operations.
Regarding the truck regs the rumour is that any trucks under euro 3 will be banned from transiting. Our trucks are both M reg Iveco’s with the 380bhp engines and as far as I am aware don’t even class as euro 1. We usually run at about a gross weight of 36 tons.
Has anyone heard if these rules have been applied or if they are going to be brought in at a future date ?
Regarding the trailers that we use they are 4m high 40ft stepframe solid roofed tautliners and I would imagine around 20 years old. They do not have ABS, no side boards for load security. Now with the German laws forever tightening regarding load security we are begining to wonder if our trailers are again allowed to be used. We do strap every pallet that goes on the trailers but we then top load with loose packages of bedding/clothes that cannot be strapped and so I presume that we may need the side boards fitted to help prevent bulging in the curtains. Do the trailers now have to be fitted with ABS ?
If anyone can give any confirmed info regarding the above it will be greatly appreciated as we have to make the decision as to whether we need to look at purchasing new trucks and trailers asap and being a charity run purely by volunteers funds are obviously limited o we don’t want to spend if we don’t have to.
I had already read that post and link but it doesn’t actually say whether side boards are compulsory or not and the other thing is the ABS question as to whether that is a legal requirement now or will be in the future.
I had already read that post and link but it doesn’t actually say whether side boards are compulsory or not and the other thing is the ABS question as to whether that is a legal requirement now or will be in the future.
Paul
On the ABS question, I don’t think it can be compulsory.
There is an EU agreement that if a vehicle is legal in it’s country of origin then it’s legal in the rest of the EU. So if your trailers are MOT’ed, then they are legal, with or without ABS.
On load securing. Sideboards aren’t compulsory, due to the same reason as above. However
Germany has tightened up considerably on checking load security and the opinion of the official who checks the load is taken over the opinion of the driver.
They believe that sideboards, anti-slip mats and straps over every little thing is necessary for load security. So you stand a very high chance of being fined for an insecure load if it doesn’t meet with the inspectors approval.
You’ll also have to secure your load to their satisfaction before you’re allowed to move on. Buying straps at an inflated price if you don’t have enough.
While I worked for Murfitts, my wagon had brackets fitted to its sliding roof supports for putting sideboards in. This happened after a run-in with German traffic police. Apparently a load of cornflakes was written off when the driver had to strap a 2 high palletised load, because there where no sideboards in the wagon. The story was that the driver tightened the straps as much as seemed reasonable considering the load. The police insisted that the straps were tightened as much as possible, which destroyed the top pallets boxes. So Murfitts got these brackets fitted, along with sideboards.
