I’m looking to buy an urban Fridge trailer.
Preferably single axle, shortest wheelbase possible.
Very hard to find.
If anyone knows of anywhere that has these for sale, or where supermarkets dispose of their trailers, please let me know.
Thanks
Might be wise to contact Sainsbury’s head office as our fleet are coming up for disposal soon. We have rear steer twin axles as well if that helps but definitely plenty of single axles too [emoji106]
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Command steer ex supermarket will be high on maintenance.
cav551:
Command steer ex supermarket will be high on maintenance.
In what respect ? Genuine question as we run one, albeit very low miles.
Ex supermarket trailers will have very high fridge hours, they do not sit around genuinely idle for very long. Unless you are very lucky they will have accumulated significant mileage and the turntable steering gear will be worn.To be clear I am meaning command steer to be mechanically operated steering commaded by the fifth wheel angle rather than electrically operated from a remote. These suffer from abuse owing to careless coupling casuing significant strain on the linkage and turntable. The cost of maintenance to this system is one reason that these are not so popular as they were a few years ago. Apart from the scrapes and other damage to the bodywork the interior also suffers, compartment bukheads will have had a lot of hard use and the degree of product spillage and resultant insulation penetration from malicious damage and wash out needs to be seen to be believed. If you have one with low miles then it has come from an RDC with few awkward deliveries.
Rainford trailers in Merseyside buy a lot of ex-supermarket trailers.
I think it’d be simpler to just get a 17 tonner rigid or if it’s just the odd job once a week or so just subbie it out and let someone else have all the grief and cream a bit off the rate. If it’s just the odd run it’s probably more financially viable to subby it out than to spend thousands to buy gear that’s going to spend 90% of it’s time sat there doing nothing but still needing maintaining and safety checks. It’s like buying a new car and only doing 3,000 miles a year - it’s probably cheaper just to use a taxi to go everywhere you want to go in a car and hire one as needed for long journeys. We’ve got some urbans and I’ve only ever done one actual delivery with one to a fairly easy place in Birmingham that was drive in and out but had a short frontage. Pretty much all the deliveries on them are left to the subby Wincantons, especially in London, and we just drag them down to their yards on a night trunk.
cav551:
Ex supermarket trailers will have very high fridge hours, they do not sit around genuinely idle for very long. Unless you are very lucky they will have accumulated significant mileage and the turntable steering gear will be worn.To be clear I am meaning command steer to be mechanically operated steering commaded by the fifth wheel angle rather than electrically operated from a remote. These suffer from abuse owing to careless coupling casuing significant strain on the linkage and turntable. The cost of maintenance to this system is one reason that these are not so popular as they were a few years ago. Apart from the scrapes and other damage to the bodywork the interior also suffers, compartment bukheads will have had a lot of hard use and the degree of product spillage and resultant insulation penetration from malicious damage and wash out needs to be seen to be believed. If you have one with low miles then it has come from an RDC with few awkward deliveries.
Yes fair points, I misled you a bit with my question as we have an ex Comet Electrical one that we turned into a curtainsider, so none of the fridge issues, and use with an urban tractor unit. (Bit of a strange idea but it works for us !). We were a bit worried about the turntable and did all the checks with getting whole axle off the ground and checking for play etc. Was OK except for shoveling off the mass surplus of grease that was lying around waiting to catch fire if the brakes got hot. I did investigate replacement turntable components and I think it was possible to get them but did not get as far as price as we, happily, have never needed anything. Agree about the coupling but this appeared to have had very light use before and we are very careful to uncouple in a straight line. Can imagine a few high speed “failed because of the angle” coupling attempts would not do any good to anything. I think the original manufacturer of the gear was dutch ?
cav551:
Ex supermarket trailers will have very high fridge hours, they do not sit around genuinely idle for very long. Unless you are very lucky they will have accumulated significant mileage and the turntable steering gear will be worn.To be clear I am meaning command steer to be mechanically operated steering commaded by the fifth wheel angle rather than electrically operated from a remote. These suffer from abuse owing to careless coupling casuing significant strain on the linkage and turntable. The cost of maintenance to this system is one reason that these are not so popular as they were a few years ago. Apart from the scrapes and other damage to the bodywork the interior also suffers, compartment bukheads will have had a lot of hard use and the degree of product spillage and resultant insulation penetration from malicious damage and wash out needs to be seen to be believed. If you have one with low miles then it has come from an RDC with few awkward deliveries.
It’s true they are in a bad state the ones I’ve seen and high fridge hours.
I’m looking for an 8m single axle, will these have the same mechanical issues above?
There was a period when the 10 metre rear steers were being replaced with 8m single axle for the really awkward deliveries and standard 10 metre became more common again. 8m will probably have seen a slightly easier life with lower fridge hours becasue of the lack of internal volume. A single axle will obviously have tracked better but since it is right at the very rear then it will have spent some time airborne, so look for square knobbly tyres and fatigue cracks around the rear bodywork caused by all the bouncing.