Trailers we use have the EN-12642-XL certified curtains. These usually have a yellow badge on the curtain saying so & as of Sept last year it’s accepted in the UK that loads with a ‘positive fit’ (ie. 26 pallets shrink wrapped pallets front to back) don’t need internal restraint with these curtains.
Saves a loads of time to be honest, although I still usually strap the back two just to hold the stock.
alder:
For those that are carrying their OWN straps you are doing a great job and by hec do the bosses know it. Go to Morans now and haul milk for Arla and you have to bring your own straps!
Don’t the Arla trailers have bars & cups in them? Don’t need ratchet straps for milk work.
rob22888:
Trailers we use have the EN-12642-XL certified curtains. These usually have a yellow badge on the curtain saying so & as of Sept last year it’s accepted in the UK that loads with a ‘positive fit’ (ie. 26 pallets shrink wrapped pallets front to back) don’t need internal restraint with these curtains.Saves a loads of time to be honest, although I still usually strap the back two just to hold the stock.
More hauliers should have these. Perfect for full loads. Of course some think they have got them even though there’s nothing on the curtain/trailer to show they are to the XL standard. It’s just easier to ‘think’ they are.
shep532:
rob22888:
Trailers we use have the EN-12642-XL certified curtains. These usually have a yellow badge on the curtain saying so & as of Sept last year it’s accepted in the UK that loads with a ‘positive fit’ (ie. 26 pallets shrink wrapped pallets front to back) don’t need internal restraint with these curtains.Saves a loads of time to be honest, although I still usually strap the back two just to hold the stock.
More hauliers should have these. Perfect for full loads. Of course some think they have got them even though there’s nothing on the curtain/trailer to show they are to the XL standard. It’s just easier to ‘think’ they are.
To be honest though, if you are doing full palletised loads i’m not sure what the point is of putting those poxy internal straps on. I pull a lot of booze & pop around and i’m pretty sure if I did enough to send 1 tonne pallets toppling into the curtain, them straps aren’t saving the situation. Surely you should be throwing a ratchet over the load and strapping them down to the bed, but I never see anybody doing it.
Its really enjoyable when you get loaded with 26 pallets of pop,which you then cross strap with your internal straps to then find out you have to dock on a bay at a RDC.
Lesson learnt-find out where you are delivering to before you decide to cross strap.
alder:
Radar19:
chester1:
Radar19:
Whats so wrong with carrying a set of your own straps? What if you get a trailer with a load that needs strapping but there none to be found?I think the point is that your boss should supply you with ratchet straps to secure the load . And if you are doing a change over and there is no straps on the other trailer you take yours of the last one
True but I always like to keep a set for myself. The ones I have in mine (rigid) are for hooking into those eye rings but sometimes the pallets don’t line up so I have proper under body hooks for that.
The under the body hooks have no load factor and VOSA will do you if you are securing to those. Strapping down should be to the body of the truck, the hooks underneath are for fly sheets to protect from rain.
So, why do they go to all the trouble of putting hooks on some curtainsiders?
weeto:
So, why do they go to all the trouble of putting hooks on some curtainsiders?
To make it easier to convert to a flatbed after a bridge strike.
rob22888:
alder:
For those that are carrying their OWN straps you are doing a great job and by hec do the bosses know it. Go to Morans now and haul milk for Arla and you have to bring your own straps!Don’t the Arla trailers have bars & cups in them? Don’t need ratchet straps for milk work.
Bit of a sore point with me as last week I did training for two days. On Wednesday I was with a guy called Martin who had 11 years with arla and on Thursday I was with Pat who also had 11 years with Arla. Both nice chaps and they had urban trailers, straight forward drops. We started at 4:30am and were back in the yard at 14:00. They both had a bag of straps which they told me they brought over from Arla. They used the straps to strap the empty TETS to the trailer wall creating a tunnel in the middle to deliver the full tets to the remaining drops. I was a bit peeved that I told the agency (ARM owned by Morans) that I did not want multi drop work but thought that “This does not look too bad”. The only thing to really watch was when you deliver to Aldi as theirs is always a ramp on an incline so you have to be careful letting those tets loose as an awful lot of weight is suddenly directed at YOU. Anyway the training went well I thought but Martin and Pat warned me that Morans do not supply the straps as they say you can do the job with load bars! So I started work on Saturday 0500. To my horror I had loads of drops in the north east and then I was further dismayed to see I had a full 13mtr trailer loaded to the back doors. So off I went and the first two drops went okay then the third drop was Tesco 26 TETS! Stobart was on the bay and Tesco have a policy of one truck, one bay! I was kept waiting for 2.5 hours while stobarts driver and his pal in the loading bay talked about the ladies (don’t ask how I know). So now I am running very late. To top this the guy on the bay tells me to take as many empty tets as possible as they have been left for weeks! There were over 60 so I took half 30. So after unloading the 26 milk TETS I loaded the 30 empties on the truck. I have no straps and to my surprise the cups don’t fit into most of the holes on the metal strips because they have been bashed in! So I have a hell of a job securing the empties. At the next two drops the problem is magnified and at the last but one drop I am in Aldi Redcar. A row of empties cuts loose as I am trying to fight my way to the produce for this store. About 40 of them break free and run off the trailer carrying me at the front! They slam me into the cooler hurting my back. It took ages to get them back on the trailer and the Aldi manager was more concerned that I had not put the milk in the cooler for them! In agony I phoned up and said I can’t make the last drop as it is a 1.5 hour drive back to Pontefract Road from Redcar and my back was hurting. So I came back and a driver jumped in straight away to take the truck back to make the last drop.
I had failed and shamefully told them I would not be returning the next morning.
alder - tip if you ever go back.
If your doing big superstore drops on level loading bays, between each drop bar the milk off and line the empties up in front in two rows to the left. Make up the third row on the right by throwing down some made up empties on the floor on their side - these will act as dunnage & stop the two rows from moving about. All you have to do at each drop then is pick up the two or three empties lying on the deck and your straight into the milk behind.
That’s how I did the job without straps at Wisemans for a good few years & I didn’t know a single other artic driver that used straps. Whenever I had an Aldi I used to pull their tets up to the front the drop before & bar them off separately. Load them in three’s side on and they won’t roll at you when you take the bar off. Again, use an empty tet lying on the floor as dunnage.
Milk tets are a challenge & adjustable air suspension is always your best friend. If I had a lot of empties on I used to leave the ignition on at some places (assuming it was secure) so it auto-levelled as you went along… otherwise you found yourself with an avalanche 3/4 of the way through tipping as the air bags inflated 
rob22888:
shep532:
rob22888:
Trailers we use have the EN-12642-XL certified curtains. These usually have a yellow badge on the curtain saying so & as of Sept last year it’s accepted in the UK that loads with a ‘positive fit’ (ie. 26 pallets shrink wrapped pallets front to back) don’t need internal restraint with these curtains.Saves a loads of time to be honest, although I still usually strap the back two just to hold the stock.
More hauliers should have these. Perfect for full loads. Of course some think they have got them even though there’s nothing on the curtain/trailer to show they are to the XL standard. It’s just easier to ‘think’ they are.
To be honest though, if you are doing full palletised loads i’m not sure what the point is of putting those poxy internal straps on. I pull a lot of booze & pop around and i’m pretty sure if I did enough to send 1 tonne pallets toppling into the curtain, them straps aren’t saving the situation. Surely you should be throwing a ratchet over the load and strapping them down to the bed, but I never see anybody doing it.
You’d roll the truck long before one of those internal straps breaks.
Radar19:
You’d roll the truck long before one of those internal straps breaks.
That’ll be why the labels say LC 350 DaN on most of them. That’s 350kg meaning they break somewhere around 700kg when new, obviously less when not so new.
And that’s before we look at what they are attached to - which in some cases is just a little bit weaker than would be ideal.
If they were as strong as you suggest the trailer would be given an XL rating.
rob22888:
alder - tip if you ever go back.If your doing big superstore drops on level loading bays, between each drop bar the milk off and line the empties up in front in two rows to the left. Make up the third row on the right by throwing down some made up empties on the floor on their side - these will act as dunnage & stop the two rows from moving about. All you have to do at each drop then is pick up the two or three empties lying on the deck and your straight into the milk behind.
That’s how I did the job without straps at Wisemans for a good few years & I didn’t know a single other artic driver that used straps. Whenever I had an Aldi I used to pull their tets up to the front the drop before & bar them off separately. Load them in three’s side on and they won’t roll at you when you take the bar off. Again, use an empty tet lying on the floor as dunnage.
Milk tets are a challenge & adjustable air suspension is always your best friend. If I had a lot of empties on I used to leave the ignition on at some places (assuming it was secure) so it auto-levelled as you went along… otherwise you found yourself with an avalanche 3/4 of the way through tipping as the air bags inflated
Well that would have helped in the training and I can see how that would work. They should train people for the real job they are going to face. The two days training I had were a waste of time. I will not be going back as I did not want multi drop and milk work in the first place. I was told I would be doing 2/3 drops a day and it was mainly RDCs. Also the 2.5 hour wait for the stobart truck to get off that bay put me off. Thanks for your advice anyway 
rob22888:
shep532:
rob22888:
Trailers we use have the EN-12642-XL certified curtains. These usually have a yellow badge on the curtain saying so & as of Sept last year it’s accepted in the UK that loads with a ‘positive fit’ (ie. 26 pallets shrink wrapped pallets front to back) don’t need internal restraint with these curtains.Saves a loads of time to be honest, although I still usually strap the back two just to hold the stock.
More hauliers should have these. Perfect for full loads. Of course some think they have got them even though there’s nothing on the curtain/trailer to show they are to the XL standard. It’s just easier to ‘think’ they are.
To be honest though, if you are doing full palletised loads i’m not sure what the point is of putting those poxy internal straps on. I pull a lot of booze & pop around and i’m pretty sure if I did enough to send 1 tonne pallets toppling into the curtain, them straps aren’t saving the situation. Surely you should be throwing a ratchet over the load and strapping them down to the bed, but I never see anybody doing it.
I’ve been shown health and safety sheets with pictures etc where unstrapped loads have gone sideways and are bulging through the curtain, damaging stock into the process. I was told that this was preventable if they were strapped, but if the curtains bulged from the load going, as you say there isn’t much an internal strap would do! Although our place say strap all loads so I do so unless its toilet paper or something…
Also 26 x 400kg internal straps is 10400kg which is less than half capacity… So in theory the XL curtains would always be the legal and realistic option as aren’t they rated to the weight capacity of the trailer?
This makes me wonder about the bales of paper and waste we carry…we have been told only use internals and apparently VOSA say this is acceptable because h&s say using ratchets can cut into the bales and cause a bale to fall off when trying to unstrap!!
Alder.
I never did full loads of milk, but have done quite of a lot of multi drop supermarket work in my time with milk tetes mixed in with roller cages and stacking trays on wheels so have some idea of the problems.
When i did the job, there sometimes came a point during your day, say at 1/2 or 2/3rds through when you bit the bullet and swapped the whole load around when at a suitable delivery point where you have room to play and the back door staff are reasonable.
By making a channel, shifting the full ones back and putting the empties to the front, gave you a second bite at the cherry as it were.
Obviously you used your loaf here, you didn’t restack them so everything was empty forward of the trailer axles and full tetes all behind the axles right up to the back doors, even if you stacked the first 15’ from the headboard with empties and then secured them you can then forget about that batch.
It made a lot of work at one drop but often made the job easier overall instead of shifting almost a full trailer load of empties 2 or 3 times at the last drops…though each day/trip was different, the most suitable drops to sort stuff out might be the last drop so no need.
It was one of those jobs where the more you did it you learned all the little labour saving tricks for yourself, and i don’t mean the excuses the usual suspect drivers used to never collect empties… 
I would say it’s time to get a container job, where load security consists of 4 door handles and 4 twist locks. Takes about 30 seconds to secure a load
KarlM:
Also 26 x 400kg internal straps is 10400kg which is less than half capacity… So in theory the XL curtains would always be the legal and realistic option as aren’t they rated to the weight capacity of the trailer?
The EN 12642 XL standard is as follows
Headboard 0.5 Payload
Rear 0.3 Payload
Sides 0.4 Payload.
These are minimums and some trailers/bodies made to exceed these
According to EN 12195 we must secure the load to 0.8 payload forward and 0.5 payload sideways and backwards. Therefore if you have a Coefficient of Friction of 0.3 (equivalent to a dry wooden pallet on a clean dry wooden floor) we get 0.5 via the headboard and 0.3 via friction giving 0.8 = Secure forwards.
The sides are 0.4 of the payload meaning we only need a coefficient of friction of 0.1 or above and the load is secure sideways.
The rear is 0.3 meaning we need a coefficient of friction of at least 0.2
All of the above is usually only valid if there are no gaps in the load at all front to back or to the headboard and no more than 80mm gap to the sides. If we have a greater gap to the sides or any gaps to the front the EN 12642 XL standard is invalid/void.
The problem is a diminishing load where we end up with gaps or if our coefficient of friction isn’t high enough - example plastic pallets, things on wheels, steel or even a wet/mouldy pallet.
For those that mentioned containers. A standard ISO container has to withstand at least 0.4 payload front and rear and 0.6 payload side walls, which makes the front actually not as strong as a trailer headboard!!!
For anyone who wants to compare the EN 12642 L and XL standard the EN 12642 L is as follows:
Headboard 0.4 payload to max 5t
Rear 0.25 payload to max 3.1t
Sides 0.3 payload for a box, 0.3 payload for a tilt with the boards fitted and ZERO for a curtain
That means that with a coefficient of friction of 0.3 the headboard can effectively hold back 10.1t, rear doors 15.8t and sides either 0.3 payload or ZERO
I was in a 7.5T curtain sider carrying 600-700kg pallets of cardboard packaging. (4 pallets, two headboard, two rear wheels, one small pallet of shrink wrap rolls or something similar. Just set off because it was 4am, the company driver who was waiting for me to make sure everything was okay went of on his run, after telling me the radio didn’t work and that sometimes the truck didn’t start, and I thought it’d be fine.
Strapped them up at a services (thought it a good idea). Hangy straps over the sides of the load, and a ratchet strap over the rolls. Tightened the curtains as well.
Going round these country lanes, missed the drop for the second time, with nowhere to quickly back it into to turn around. Going into this village OH ■■■■ CAR. Hit the brakes to avoid hitting the parked cars, THUNK THUD THUD THUNK THUNK. Chef guy carrying some pots looks at me from the pavement. “■■■■”.
Park up, both pallets at the back had gone over. And the left pallet (heavier) had caught the roof strap as it went over, and bent the cross bar and tube at the top. Oh ■■■■.
1 hour of handballing everything onto pallets for the telehandler, and getting covered in all sorts of excrement later, and the damage is not pretty.
Ratched strapped the curtains back (also kept the little bit shaky doors in place) and set off on my slightly dampned way. Oh and the company I delivered to phoned the supplier (who I was driving for) and said that I was “a bit arsey”.
Last ■■■■■■■ time I go to Somerset.
simple rule - your truck, your load. If you want it strapped it gets strapped.
I apply this regardless of whether I’m driving my truck or someone elses. And yes I have had the argument of ‘you can’t get up on the bed to strap your load in this yard’ - my response is always ‘Best take it off then mate because I’m going nowhere without that lot strapped down. Your decision.’
As far as I’m concerned if someone is pushing me to get a load out of the yard, they won’t be backing me up when Oswald the 4’6" VOSA examiner with a small man complex is fining me at the side of the road. I’m there to move the load safely for them, not as quickly as possible.
htmldude:
I was in a 7.5T curtain sider carrying 600-700kg pallets of cardboard packaging. (4 pallets, two headboard, two rear wheels, one small pallet of shrink wrap rolls or something similar. Just set off because it was 4am, the company driver who was waiting for me to make sure everything was okay went of on his run, after telling me the radio didn’t work and that sometimes the truck didn’t start, and I thought it’d be fine.Strapped them up at a services (thought it a good idea). Hangy straps over the sides of the load, and a ratchet strap over the rolls. Tightened the curtains as well.
Going round these country lanes, missed the drop for the second time, with nowhere to quickly back it into to turn around. Going into this village OH [zb] CAR. Hit the brakes to avoid hitting the parked cars, THUNK THUD THUD THUNK THUNK. Chef guy carrying some pots looks at me from the pavement. “[zb]”.
Park up, both pallets at the back had gone over. And the left pallet (heavier) had caught the roof strap as it went over, and bent the cross bar and tube at the top. Oh [zb].
1 hour of handballing everything onto pallets for the telehandler, and getting covered in all sorts of excrement later, and the damage is not pretty.
Ratched strapped the curtains back (also kept the little bit shaky doors in place) and set off on my slightly dampned way. Oh and the company I delivered to phoned the supplier (who I was driving for) and said that I was “a bit arsey”.
Last [zb] time I go to Somerset.
Clearly ‘hangy straps’ aren’t going to stop anything shifting forwards if there are gaps in the load - although I see plenty of loads where drivers think they will. Your incident also highlights just how strong the roof rails/tracks are - not very! It also highlights those situations where you certainly don’t set out to brake hard and have all good intentions of driving accordingly - then something happens and it is too late. And of course what about the way the pallets were wrapped?
Could have been a lot worse. Luckily a 7.5t doesn’t carry much when it comes to weight.
alder:
… and at the last but one drop I am in Aldi Redcar. A row of empties cuts loose as I am trying to fight my way to the produce for this store. About 40 of them break free and run off the trailer carrying me at the front! They slam me into the cooler hurting my back. It took ages to get them back on the trailer and the Aldi manager was more concerned that I had not put the milk in the cooler for them! In agony I phoned up and said I can’t make the last drop as it is a 1.5 hour drive back to Pontefract Road from Redcar and my back was hurting. So I came back and a driver jumped in straight away to take the truck back to make the last drop.
I hope you made sure this was entered into the accident book at the drop site.