Don’t throw stones, have you not seen how many cracks he already has in that bloody windscreen??
Carryfast:
Zetorpilot:
Regarding the above post, dollies are used here too - I see them every day, used to pull ferry trailers. Also, my firm has 13,6 trailers that are used BOTH as the first trailer in an artic / auxiliary combination and also on a dolly behind a rigid.
Anyway regarding the manuverability of the w&d’s, I tried to take some photos at the weekend to illustrate. Obviously we drive on the right here so this is the equivalent of turning left at the lights in the UK.
Approaching a typical turn at traffic lights (this is actually a bit tighter than it looks ) I’m going to turn right
I haven’t had to move out to the left at all, check from the mirror:
And going round the corner you’ll see I haven’t had to take a large swing at all. The rear wheels of the trailer are about 20cm from the kerb:
As I mentioned previously this is a 77’ combination, a 32’ rigid pulling a 40’ trailer (the container kind of gives that away!). It used to have a 45’ trailer when I first drove it - the extra length being for tipping gear for the container. It followed the same way around corners though.
If you look carefully in the mirror you can get an idea about the way the trailer follows. The steering bogie has two axles, and you can see it’s still pointing fairly straight even though the rigid is pretty much around the corner already. There is a few feet of container already directly behind the rigid. The front shoulder of the trailer never goes outside the area already cleared by the rigid.
I hope this is of interest, but they don’t show just how amazing it actually is - I still can’t quite believe it after three years doing the job.
Thanks Zetorpilot that’s what I’ve been trying to tell them let’s hope that now they’re going to believe it but there’s none so blind as those that will not see.So are newmercman and bobthedog now going to tell us that they could have done all that with a standard length yank artic outfit or a B train that’s even before we start taking the zb out of the allowed yank payload weights versus the road space they need to run at those weights… As they say those who live in glass houses should’nt throw stones.
waynedl:
Don’t throw stones, have you not seen how many cracks he already has in that bloody windscreen??
Yes by all accounts that’s the British green rail freight barmy army,supported by Brit ex pat North American truck drivers calling for all trucks to be no bigger than 4X2 tractor units pulling 40 foot semi trailers,who make regular attacks on all Scandinavian road transport operations having given up trying to win the arguments against them.
waynedl:
Don’t throw stones, have you not seen how many cracks he already has in that bloody windscreen??
Yes by all accounts that’s the British green rail freight barmy army,supported by Brit ex pat North American truck drivers calling for all trucks to be no bigger than 4X2 tractor units pulling 40 foot semi trailers,who make regular attacks on all Scandinavian road transport operations having given up trying to win the arguments against them.
WTF are you talking about? I couldn’t give a toss about either of the combinations you or BTD are going on about, I never said the Scandinavian way was wrong, I said that it would be the more expensive way to do it, the fact that you would need to swap all your tractor units for drawbar prime movers makes that a fact The same applies to super B’s, but as trailers are cheaper and existing ones could be converted it would not be so expensive to do.
In Scandinavia they ran drawbars more than artics, so it was easier for them to stick longer trailers behind the prime mover to give them their current combinations, that doesn’t apply for the rest of Europe.
Carryfast, you’re sitting there with delusions of grandeur, imagining yourself trucking through Europe at 50ppm in your 2mpg two stroke 100ft long supertruck so you can drive the Poles out of business and you have the audacity to suggest that others are barmy…oh dear
My comments regarding shorter trailers and bigger cabs were tongue in cheek, but I would say that most drivers would prefer that option, unless they have Billy Big Wheels Syndrome
waynedl:
Don’t throw stones, have you not seen how many cracks he already has in that bloody windscreen??
Yes by all accounts that’s the British green rail freight barmy army,supported by Brit ex pat North American truck drivers calling for all trucks to be no bigger than 4X2 tractor units pulling 40 foot semi trailers,who make regular attacks on all Scandinavian road transport operations having given up trying to win the arguments against them.
WTF are you talking about? I couldn’t give a toss about either of the combinations you or BTD are going on about, I never said the Scandinavian way was wrong, I said that it would be the more expensive way to do it, the fact that you would need to swap all your tractor units for drawbar prime movers makes that a fact The same applies to super B’s, but as trailers are cheaper and existing ones could be converted it would not be so expensive to do.
In Scandinavia they ran drawbars more than artics, so it was easier for them to stick longer trailers behind the prime mover to give them their current combinations, that doesn’t apply for the rest of Europe.
Carryfast, you’re sitting there with delusions of grandeur, imagining yourself trucking through Europe at 50ppm in your 2mpg two stroke 100ft long supertruck so you can drive the Poles out of business and you have the audacity to suggest that others are barmy…oh dear
My comments regarding shorter trailers and bigger cabs were tongue in cheek, but I would say that most drivers would prefer that option, unless they have Billy Big Wheels Syndrome
From my point of view and many other new start owner drivers we would’nt have to ‘swap’ anything because we would’nt be lumbered with an existing fleet of tractor units or any tractor unit at all because we have’nt started up yet. .So the east european international running fleets would just have to live with it.But why the zb would we then want our cstomers,who we’d be subbing our traction services for,to get involved with chopping loads of load deck space and payload weight potential out of their existing 45 foot trailer fleet just to make up a less efficient,less flexible,dogs dinner of a B train outfit that can’t even handle as good in it’s road manners as a decent drawbar outfit.But in adition to all that maybe I’ve read it wrong but both yours and Bobthedog’s view was that a current legal Euro spec rigid coupled to a current legal 45 foot euro spec trailer would be a non starter,not just because of the (percieved) expense of using prime movers versus tractor units to pull them with,but also because of some unfounded bs concerning the likely road manners of a Scandinavian Drawbar outfit used throughout Europe because of it’s overall length .Not surprising if your mainly used to the characteristics of yank type artic outfits,running at similar overall lengths,using similar length tractor units as a european rigid,pulling even longer semi trailers than 45 footers.The fact that they and (I’m guessing) both you and Bobthedog use those type of outfits to run at less than 40 tonnes gross in the States would fit that old saying about people who live in glass houses. But I was referring to that 4x2 tractor unit pulling a 40 foot semi outfit in the States in a tongue in cheek context just as you were .But those yanks and Scandinavian drivers are going to be really zb’d off when they hear you saying that they’ve all got Billy Big Wheels syndrome because they prefer their current six wheeler conventional tractor unit/ 53 foot semi trailer artic outfits or Scandinavian Drawbar outfits than your ‘tongue in cheek idea’. . But having said that whereas those yanks would probably also be as happy as I would have been to have had a two stroke Detroit in the wagon if possible I’d also understand the practicalities of using a Scania V8 Prime Mover for my needs,just as they probably use 4 stroke Detroits these days,instead on the basis of horses for courses and cost effectiveness/efficiency/availability. By the way Austria and Germany are both European countries that are known for being places where drawbar outfits are as common as artics if not moreso.
You miss the point though Carryfast, when I refer to Billy Big Wheels, I’m not generalising, I mean YOU
Look, Super Bs work in Canada, super size drawbars work in Scandinavia, although both make sense from a ton/mile point of view, neither of them would work in the UK, so the whole one is better than the other thing is an exercise in futility
What I’m saying about super Bs is that if such a thing was allowed on the road from let’s say Jan 1st 2011, it would be easier and cheaper to buy new trailers and use existing units, which could also carry on pulling normal 45’ trailers when there was no need for a bigger wagon, rather than investing in a load of prime movers that are only 6 wheel rigids when they’re not hooked up to anything, see where I’m coming from
newmercman:
You miss the point though Carryfast, when I refer to Billy Big Wheels, I’m not generalising, I mean YOU
Look, Super Bs work in Canada, super size drawbars work in Scandinavia, although both make sense from a ton/mile point of view, neither of them would work in the UK, so the whole one is better than the other thing is an exercise in futility
What I’m saying about super Bs is that if such a thing was allowed on the road from let’s say Jan 1st 2011, it would be easier and cheaper to buy new trailers and use existing units, which could also carry on pulling normal 45’ trailers when there was no need for a bigger wagon, rather than investing in a load of prime movers that are only 6 wheel rigids when they’re not hooked up to anything, see where I’m coming from
But you’re missing my point that in this context it does’nt matter what they do in UK I’m only talking about the context of international European work in this context which also just means we’ve got to run in uk as transit to do that just as in the case of when we went from 32 t to 38 t and then 40 t those were European directives.However it actually turned out that it was also more efficient running at those weights on UK work too which is why we don’t see uk work all running at the old uk 32 t weights here now. .But the fact that when a drawbar prime mover is’nt hauling a trailer it’s still a rigid is an advantage not a disadvantage.So we send two Prime movers to load up with 30 tonnes of freight at one forwarder then we run around the corner to another and pick up two trailers loaded with around another 30 tonnes of freight each all destined for Italy or wherever on a long distance basis.The first forwarder does’nt know or care about the second one and the second one is already paying us to take both zb trailer loads.
Carryfast, you not only live in cloud cuckoo land, you don’t read properly either, or you get a new twist on things to alter your argument.
I have no aversion to either combination, really. I would not drive either one in the UK simply because people like you would expect me to drive it for nothing. If I had to choose, the basic reality is that the B train is more practical becuase it is 2 separate trailers that can be moved individually by the tractor unit. I have spent much time on the roads and have seen many occasions where a farm tractor had to be used to move the drawbar trailers because it wouldn’t fit any other way.
As for 77+ foot combinations… in the UK… What an absurdity.
And now you are burbling about sending 2 trucks in to load an individual load… You are, without a doubt, completely shot away.
bobthedog:
Carryfast, you not only live in cloud cuckoo land, you don’t read properly either, or you get a new twist on things to alter your argument.
I have no aversion to either combination, really. I would not drive either one in the UK simply because people like you would expect me to drive it for nothing. If I had to choose, the basic reality is that the B train is more practical becuase it is 2 separate trailers that can be moved individually by the tractor unit. I have spent much time on the roads and have seen many occasions where a farm tractor had to be used to move the drawbar trailers because it wouldn’t fit any other way.
As for 77+ foot combinations… in the UK… What an absurdity.
And now you are burbling about sending 2 trucks in to load an individual load… You are, without a doubt, completely shot away.
Who said anything about any ‘individual load’.15 tonnes of freight on each prime mover can mean anything just so long as it’s going somewhere in the vicinity of where the trailers are going in this context although two British trucks needed to haul around 90 tonnes of freight in total seems a lot more efficient and beneficial to the British economy than the amount of Polish artics needed to haul the same weight .But you’ll have to take that issue up with Zetorpilot’s guvnor because I’m only guessing at the best way to utilise the outfit at the moment but if you don’t like the answer that probably does’nt make him ‘shot away’ though as he’s obviously running a viable operation unlike most of the British industry at the moment. But if you really can’t make a 45 foot trailer work,regardless wether it’s coupled to a six wheeler rigid with a dolly or not,other than by using it as two seperate semi trailers ,then that would mean that even the present fleet of artics would need to be converted into b trains.
Personally, Rob, I like the B trains. They cut in less than the trailers we have here, have no tailswing, can cope with the weights while distributing (carryfast simply can’t grasp this) said weights evenly and the nature of the combination means that you can move them much easier in tighter spots.
The “thing” that Stan Robinson showed is nothing more than a turnpiker here, or a roadtrain in AU, but is still more sensible than trying to have a 6 wheeled rigid with a drawbar in the UK. I know the A trains work. I see so many of them that carryfast would need to put fresh underwear on every few minutes were he here seeing them as well. But the UK is not Canada or Scandinavia. The UK is a piddly little island with about 90 million cars trying to fit into a small number of places and driven by complete knobs. Scandinavia has a population of 12 people and about 3 million moose. They are practical there, and the manufacturers have designed the vehicles to suit the terrain.
In the UK, a 77+’ combination, particularly with a rigid tractive unit and a 45’ trailer behind it will mean that the trailer will spend a lot of time out of the drivers immediate sightlines. There will be puddles of cyclists all over the place. Then you have to factor in that the majority of the drivers will be eastern europeans on 3 quid an hour. You also need to add the fact that the majority of UK hauliers simply could not afford to buy these things in the first place which will mean even more foreign monstrosities on the UK roads.
Carryfast, why would the majority of UK fleet tractors need to be made to Super B specs? In your scenario, all hauliers, well people like you that will work for nothing, would have to go buy 6 wheeled rigids with drawbar hitches to replace their tractors… Also, most design train weights are over 50 tonnes anyway. You are, as normal, talking bollox.
bobthedog:
Personally, Rob, I like the B trains. They cut in less than the trailers we have here, have no tailswing, can cope with the weights while distributing (carryfast simply can’t grasp this) said weights evenly and the nature of the combination means that you can move them much easier in tighter spots.
The “thing” that Stan Robinson showed is nothing more than a turnpiker here, or a roadtrain in AU, but is still more sensible than trying to have a 6 wheeled rigid with a drawbar in the UK. I know the A trains work. I see so many of them that carryfast would need to put fresh underwear on every few minutes were he here seeing them as well. But the UK is not Canada or Scandinavia. The UK is a piddly little island with about 90 million cars trying to fit into a small number of places and driven by complete knobs. Scandinavia has a population of 12 people and about 3 million moose. They are practical there, and the manufacturers have designed the vehicles to suit the terrain.
In the UK, a 77+’ combination, particularly with a rigid tractive unit and a 45’ trailer behind it will mean that the trailer will spend a lot of time out of the drivers immediate sightlines. There will be puddles of cyclists all over the place. Then you have to factor in that the majority of the drivers will be eastern europeans on 3 quid an hour. You also need to add the fact that the majority of UK hauliers simply could not afford to buy these things in the first place which will mean even more foreign monstrosities on the UK roads.
Carryfast, why would the majority of UK fleet tractors need to be made to Super B specs? In your scenario, all hauliers, well people like you that will work for nothing, would have to go buy 6 wheeled rigids with drawbar hitches to replace their tractors… Also, most design train weights are over 50 tonnes anyway. You are, as normal, talking bollox.
Just better hope that you’re never given the choice of drive an A train over there or the dole .The UK is’nt Canada or the US but the European,long distance,haulage context as a whole (which is the operation which I’m referring to) is’nt that different.But if you think that a rigid pulling a 45 foot trailer would be worse than the present spec artics for sight lines it’s obvious that you’d need to try driving both first before you make up your mind.It was your scenario that made the case that a 45 foot trailer is an unworkable beast and needs to be converted into a B train outfit.Unless your saying that it’s only if it’s pulled by a six wheeler rigid that it suddenly becomes an immpossible to handle piece of kit .As I said to newmercman enough times no people like me would’nt have to ‘replace’ any tractor unit because I have’nt started up yet and don’t have a tractor unit to replace. But if it’s artic or b train comparisons then the correct term is design gross combination weight and if it’s A frame drawbars then it’d design gross train weights because as I’ve been trying to tell you that’s the difference between the two differnt types in which a drawbar prime mover and a drawbar trailer/s is effectively a train of seperate vehicles with no weight tranferred between them unlike artics and b trains.Which is one of the benefits of using that type of design and why it can handle more weight than an artic or a B train.Having said that an A train pulled by a tractor unit is the exception to the rule in that it’s partly a combination and partly a train.But it’s understandable as to why someone who’s probably more used to pulling a 53 foot semi trailer with a tractor unit of similar,if not larger, size as a scandinavian drawbar prime mover rigid,at much lower gross weights,would have a problem in understanding the differences.But it’s obvious that you don’t see any benefit in progressing your career up to A trains any time soon even though the opportunities are probably there which seems like a wasted opportunity to me. .
I’ve looked through it time and again, I can’t see a Super B nor a Scandinavian style wagon and drag anywhere
No it’s just that they scared the zb out of those of us who know better enough to put the case for something better before we really do have a problem on the roads with what they’re actually proposing.
Why can’t you guys just agree to disagree and move on? Neither side is going to back down and if you don’t do something this thread will be on page 1214 by this time next year and still active .
Now guys, say slowly after me
Mark “Carryfast I don’t agree with you so let’s just agree to differ”
Carryfast “Mark et all, I don’t agree with you guys so let’s just agree to differ”
Why can’t you guys just agree to disagree and move on? Neither side is going to back down and if you don’t do something this thread will be on page 1214 by this time next year and still active .
That’s what makes things interesting and not boring. If only we could get Stan Robinson and Zetorpilot’s guvnor on here to join in the argument against the EU and British transport ministers.I’d probably then at least get that Scandinavian LHV on the road by this time next year in that case.
Why can’t you guys just agree to disagree and move on? Neither side is going to back down and if you don’t do something this thread will be on page 1214 by this time next year and still active .
Now guys, say slowly after me
Mark “Carryfast I don’t agree with you so let’s just agree to differ”
Carryfast “Mark et all, I don’t agree with you guys so let’s just agree to differ”
There, easy innit !
by the time those 2 agree to disagree in years to come the law will probably of changed anyway, one of those will then post on here gloating that they were right haha, but the rest of the forum members who remebered the original argument from many many years ago will of grown old and a great-great-great grandchild will ask them "do you remember ‘trailergate’ in the year 2010 on tnet, someone called carryfastthe4th is gloating that his great-great-great grandad was right after all.
Good god after the recent and ongoing excitement of the Van den Bosch thread this one has to be the most long winded boring one Ive ever read on here! No offence to the posters involved but Jesus you chaps go on a bit.
) I’m going to turn right
but there’s none so blind as those that will not see.So are newmercman and bobthedog now going to tell us that they could have done all that with a standard length yank artic outfit or a B train that’s even before we start taking the zb out of the allowed yank payload weights versus the road space they need to run at those weights…
The same applies to super B’s, but as trailers are cheaper and existing ones could be converted it would not be so expensive to do.
