Bewick:
While there seems to be interest in the lost art of Sheeting and Roping,both positive and negative the debate only seems to be on the “skill” and “finished article” no one has raised the technical aspects of what went into the design and development behind the scenes to equip and maintain,over the years,the demands of a 150 strong, flat trailer fleet.I accept that there were much larger trailer fleets than Bewicks but judging by some of the sheets and ropes (not the quality of the work!) not a lot of thought went into the design or quality.I think it was a case of some harrassed TM banging an order in to a local tarpaulin maker based on price alone full stop! Some of the sheets I’ve seen in my time were atrocious to say the least,absolute crap which I wouldn’t have used to cover a heap of [zb] in a farm yard!!! Not wishing to be labelled an “anorak” I would happily be prepared to offer an insight into what lay behind a tidly sheeted fleet which ,I assure you, was a lot more than meets the eye!!! Anyhow there may only be a few of the older lads that would understand or appreciate my spiel! Cheers Dennis.
Dennis what on earth are you talking about
cheers Johnnie
Well said, Roping & Sheeting was & still should be a major factor, keeping loads dry & of keepimg them on the trailer, I started on long distance work 1957, & the firm I worked for carried soap powder for Thos Hedley [P&G], corner boards watertight sheets, drip sheets were just coming on to the scene then. So when I see all the curtainsiders which makes the job a lot easier it still has to be said , some drivers cant even fasten the straps properley, so I dont think they would be anygood at doing it the old way with ropes & sheets etc.
Bewick:
While there seems to be interest in the lost art of Sheeting and Roping,both positive and negative the debate only seems to be on the “skill” and “finished article” no one has raised the technical aspects of what went into the design and development behind the scenes to equip and maintain,over the years,the demands of a 150 strong, flat trailer fleet.I accept that there were much larger trailer fleets than Bewicks but judging by some of the sheets and ropes (not the quality of the work!) not a lot of thought went into the design or quality.I think it was a case of some harrassed TM banging an order in to a local tarpaulin maker based on price alone full stop! Some of the sheets I’ve seen in my time were atrocious to say the least,absolute crap which I wouldn’t have used to cover a heap of [zb] in a farm yard!!! Not wishing to be labelled an “anorak” I would happily be prepared to offer an insight into what lay behind a tidly sheeted fleet which ,I assure you, was a lot more than meets the eye!!! Anyhow there may only be a few of the older lads that would understand or appreciate my spiel! Cheers Dennis.
Dennis what on earth are you talking about
cheers Johnnie
Just shows how many sheets you bought Johnnie!!! no offence but that is just the sort of response I feared that I would get!!! Tarpaulins were just,in the eyes of many, big heavy things that had to be used to keep loads dry!! or in the case of Pickfords oily ■■■■■■ things that you threw over the lumps they carried,which didn’t flap because the outfit didn’t travel very fast!!! The seed is obviously falling on stony ground!! never mind I did try!!! Doh! Dennis.
Dennis you are correct in that I never bought a sheet as being a very poor driver it was beyond my means.
I did do a bit of general haulage and I got the sheets oily as I did a bit of bright bar where you used an old sheet first and rroped it, then your good sheet on top of it. As you say most of the loads which had to sheeted at “pickfords” was machinery and if it was used machinery it was oily and usually awkward to sheet and spikey bits which could rip the sheet if you were not careful and protected the sheet.
cheers Johnnie
P S when carrying bright bar you learnt how to just breath on the brakes otherwise the bars were passing your ear holes
sammyopisite:
Dennis you are correct in that I never bought a sheet as being a very poor driver it was beyond my means.
I did do a bit of general haulage and I got the sheets oily as I did a bit of bright bar where you used an old sheet first and rroped it, then your good sheet on top of it. As you say most of the loads which had to sheeted at “pickfords” was machinery and if it was used machinery it was oily and usually awkward to sheet and spikey bits which could rip the sheet if you were not careful and protected the sheet.
cheers Johnnie
P S when carrying bright bar you learnt how to just breath on the brakes otherwise the bars were passing your ear holes
Dodgy stuff that bar Johnnie! My old mate Curly Cargill RIP had a load of bar come straight through the cab on his 8 wheeler many years ago.What a mess his legs were where it had trapped him,I often wondered how he still managed to walk years after! Cheers Dennis.
Bewick:
While there seems to be interest in the lost art of Sheeting and Roping,both positive and negative the debate only seems to be on the “skill” and “finished article” no one has raised the technical aspects of what went into the design and development behind the scenes to equip and maintain,over the years,the demands of a 150 strong, flat trailer fleet.I accept that there were much larger trailer fleets than Bewicks but judging by some of the sheets and ropes (not the quality of the work!) not a lot of thought went into the design or quality.I think it was a case of some harrassed TM banging an order in to a local tarpaulin maker based on price alone full stop! Some of the sheets I’ve seen in my time were atrocious to say the least,absolute crap which I wouldn’t have used to cover a heap of [zb] in a farm yard!!! Not wishing to be labelled an “anorak” I would happily be prepared to offer an insight into what lay behind a tidly sheeted fleet which ,I assure you, was a lot more than meets the eye!!! Anyhow there may only be a few of the older lads that would understand or appreciate my spiel! Cheers Dennis.
ther ar some of us that still use and take pride in the dying art dennis
pardon the little dig dennis , couldn’t resist . i’m with you on the quality and size of sheets . one firm i worked for bought 24x20 plasticised sheets and 45x 14 drip sheets . i would defy anyone to do a tidy job with them especially in winter . on top of that we carried hydrated lime which sank overnight as it settled , absolute nightmare! cheers , dave
rigsby:
pardon the little dig dennis , couldn’t resist . i’m with you on the quality and size of sheets . one firm i worked for bought 24x20 plasticised sheets and 45x 14 drip sheets . i would defy anyone to do a tidy job with them especially in winter . on top of that we carried hydrated lime which sank overnight as it settled , absolute nightmare! cheers , dave
The plasticised mains were crap Dave as you rightly say,the fly sheets in the same stuff were OK though! Bit late now but I will gather my thoughts for to-morrow,or the next day, and try to explain the sheet policy we developed over the years at Bewick Transport from the time I bought my first 2 sheets for the D1000 to the time that Tautliners started to appear.Probably at that time we would have had circa 200 sets of 3 sheets each in circulation,which represented a substantial investment and within this number were various combinations spanning the different types of traffic we hauled! Cheers Dennis.
hiya,
Anyone who has worked for a firm who has run all manner of trailers IE’ flats box vans and tilts if I ever had to choose which to load I would plump for the flat anytime the vans I always seemed to get handball the tilts when I got them it was always a strip down and that took forever you knew where you was with the ropes and sheets and there’s nothing like a well roped and sheeted load a la Bewick you can look at that and say “all my own work”,and a darned sight easier to tip at the dropping off point.
thanks harry long retired.
harry_gill:
hiya,
Anyone who has worked for a firm who has run all manner of trailers IE’ flats box vans and tilts if I ever had to choose which to load I would plump for the flat anytime the vans I always seemed to get handball the tilts when I got them it was always a strip down and that took forever you knew where you was with the ropes and sheets and there’s nothing like a well roped and sheeted load a la Bewick you can look at that and say “all my own work”,and a darned sight easier to tip at the dropping off point.
thanks harry long retired.
Have to agree with you there Harry, I did a bit of traction work out of Ramsgate and always asked the traffic office for a flat rather than a tilt, even though the import trailer had been sheeted up by a foreigner, which meant that the easiest way to do it was to start again (not so easy on a windy dock) still easier than stripping down an old knocked about tilt, less attention from PC Plod too, they had a thing for tilts
harry_gill:
hiya,
Anyone who has worked for a firm who has run all manner of trailers IE’ flats box vans and tilts if I ever had to choose which to load I would plump for the flat anytime the vans I always seemed to get handball the tilts when I got them it was always a strip down and that took forever you knew where you was with the ropes and sheets and there’s nothing like a well roped and sheeted load a la Bewick you can look at that and say “all my own work”,and a darned sight easier to tip at the dropping off point.
thanks harry long retired.
Have to agree with you there Harry, I did a bit of traction work out of Ramsgate and always asked the traffic office for a flat rather than a tilt, even though the import trailer had been sheeted up by a foreigner, which meant that the easiest way to do it was to start again (not so easy on a windy dock) still easier than stripping down an old knocked about tilt, less attention from PC Plod too, they had a thing for tilts
I pulled Elvex trailers for Pinefleet in Hull and I think I preferred the flats, unless I managed to get one of the new Pacton Tilts. They ran a lot of steel from Vlardingen and a flat was easier and better for my fuel economy.
The first Sheets I bought were for the 22ft flat on the D1000 in 1968,I got them from the Liverpool firm of Weatherproof and the Main was 30 ft long X 21ft wide nominal and was Blue 15oz cotton.The Fly sheet also made of 15oz cotton and was 30ft long X 12ft wide.I also had a small “tail sheet” of about 10ft/12ft square.As I quickly found out the 21ft wide main sheet was just a bit too narrow so I had another 3ft panel put into the middle making it 24ft wide nom,which eventually became the standard width for all the Bewick Main sheets apart from those we used on the Bowater Scott traffic which had a further 1 1/2 panels of Red canvas making them around 27/28 ft wide nominal and just right for the 10ft high loads of tissue products from Barrow.With the Red centre panels it was easy to I.D. them both in the sheet store and on the trailers when rolled up.The first set of artic sheets I bought were from W & J Leech of Liverpool who we dealt with for many years afterwards for all things Sheet and ropewise.The artic sheets were 2X 30ft longX 24ft wide in 12 oz Blue canvas and had a double set of eyelets and ties right round so we could use them at both 24ft or 30ft wide which we needed to quite often with the double rows of pallets we used to put on the first trailer we ran ,a Primrose tandem 4 at 32 ft long.The fly sheet was Red 15oz canvas at 40ft long X 12 ft wide. Harking back to the D1000 I re-call struggling to cover some of the loads I brought up from London paticularly ex Metal Box from Acton,but I managed it without getting anything wet! but every scrap of sheet I had was needed!! Matters were eased a bit after I put the extra panel into the Main!! Probably enough for to-night but I’m still only in 1970 and we ran with sheets and ropes in a biggish way for over 25 years so there is more but I don’t want to bore anyone by “waxing lyrical” about what maybe an extremely boring subject to many!! Cheers Dennis.
Not boring at all Dennis, being on tippers all my life sheeting was easy compared to you lads (exept when it was stuck solid with tarmac or wet through with 3 cwt of dust on it!) so I like to see what I missed. Wouldnt be doing 6 or 7 loads a day though would I?
Carry on Dennis, never heard or seen anything on the sheets and ropes, apart from the Nylon-Hemp debate, I’m sure you have an interesting perspective on it all
newmercman:
I cut an old Pacton tilt down into a flat, I think it was an ex MAT Transport trailer, strong as an ox
That is what Panalpina did, cut a tilt into a flat, and then give you a Tilt sheet to cover it
I used to do a bit of Panalpina from Stratford LIFT, Milan (Rho) and Vienna/Graz, that was with my own trailers thankfully, flat trailers ceased to be a benefit outside of our little island, unless it was carting steel around, but who wanted to run around for peanuts
To continue a bit more then! With regard to fly sheets I didn’t buy another cotton fly after the one I got for the first trailer.I decided that the PVC covered ones were the best way to go and I put the first one into service on the D1000 to try for myself and it was Red PVC from then on albeit with a couple of variations along the way.The Bowater trailer flys eventually got a Blue centre panel and had the “bottle” sheet rope stitched round the edges which improved load safety quite a bit as the whole load was firmly held in place along the whole length.Another variation on the fly sheets for easy I. D. was a Green centre panel,this time for fly sheets in use on the 10 or 12 33ft and 36 ft tandems we had in the fleet.These particular sheets were 40ft long as opposed to the normal Bewick fly at 46ft long. As regards Hemp/Poly ropes the first ropes I bought were Hemp from Elwoods ropeworks in Kendal but by the time we got the second artic in 1970 I had switched to Poly as there was no contest!!! The Poly stayed “Tight” (as in “Scotsman”!!).Over the years the standard number of ropes on a Bewick flat was 6X 100ft Poly’s.We bought the rope in coils and I’ve spent many an hour making up the lengths and splicing eyes into each end of the rope.No just tying the ends in knots at Bewick Transport!!! We also used Poly ties on all our sheets.The first 5 trailers we got were 32/33 and 34ft long so each trailer received 1x30ftL X 24ft W and 1 X 20ft L x 24ft W in 15oz.Blue Cotton and one 40ft L X 12ft 6ins W PVC coated fly sheet.When the 40 footers started to arrive in '71 they were geared up with 2 X 30ft L X24ft W Mains and a 46ft long X12ft 6ins Red fly.Another episode to-morrow maybe as there is more I promise ugh!! Cheers Dennis.
Dennis I was taught to splice a loop in one end and then splice a dogs knob in the other end and how to splice two ropes together but with hemp ropes.
cheers Johnnie
hiya,
I’ve had to strip a tilt down to just bare bones because the bed of the trailer has been just too narrow then rope and sheet it with normal sheets and ropes but take all the bits, sides, framework and tilt cover on top of the load just so’s I could have a tilt for my next load usually from South Wales for Dover for unaccompanied shipment, I still blame MAT’s for breaking my back and spirit bleedin graft I’ll tell ya.
thanks harry long retired.
