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Road wear neutral just means that the extra weight carried by the truck is distributed evenly accross all the axles. If you see what I mean. (44t divide by 5 axles = 8.8t per axle, 60t divide by 8 axles = 7.5t per axle)
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>>If you see what I mean. (44t divide by 5 axles = 8.8t per axle, 60t divide by 8 axles = 7.5t per axle)
So where is it that superweight vehicles will cause less damage to roads..I dont even see where they are going to be fuel efficient.Sorry but totally disagree with Bigger HGV`s.
Point about spreading the weight.Don`t all HGV`s have weight spread over all Axles.Tyres are the only contact with road.So you are looking at more stress on tyres/suspension as a whole/Plus Extreme weight on roads that are not designed for them..I wonder who is going to pay for repairs/Suspect we will
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Steve
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Ok, You have an axle that is carrying 8.8t, so each wheel is carring 4.4t. That is the load being subjected to the road via the footprint of the tyre. With the super artic you have an axle weight of 7.5t, so 3.75t per wheel being subjected to the road surface, hence the larger artic is putting nearly 3/4t less load per tyre footprint, so meaning it is kinder to the road surface.
Now for fuel economy, a truck will in general do 7mpg running at 44t.At 16t it might do 8.5mpg, but at 60t it will probably run at about 6.5mpg, hence the large saving in fuel. Added to the fact that you need less traction units and less drivers to move the same amount of goods.......economies of scale my dear boy.
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Sorry I had worked it out myself.What I should have mentioned Was. AS with artics.A company starts out with possibly just one or two..They get the taste of profit.So more are brought into the network.As the scale of company usage Increases. So do the amount of vehicles used..Given the damage to roads whether *A* or *M*/roads.The damage is still occuring..Unless said roads are built to properly hold them..Where anyone says a standard road will without a problem.I think is looking at short term damage/Not long term.At the moment I fail to see any English road that will support a massive increase in weight
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Steve
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Huge goods vehicles in several sections with low rolling resistance, good fuel economy per tonne carried and low frontal wind resistance. Of course they would have to be restricted to particular routes and couldn't do local drops, but why on earth didn't we think of this before?
Oh, wait a minute, we already have:
nevardmedia.fotopic.net/p39251652.html
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..I dont even see where they are going to befuel efficient.
My truck will (under good conditions) carry 24 tonne of payload (not counting the weight of the vehicle itself)9.4 miles and use 1 gallon of fuel.
How much fuel do you think it would take to move the same load (even assuming it could be broken down) using a transit or a sprinter etc?
Not exactly rocket science, is it?
WTM
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But if you want to see economy of scale have a look here.
www.bath.ac.uk/~ccsshb/12cyl/
WTM
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Air suspension and 5 or 6 axles has made top weight artics and drawbar outfits less damaging than they were, but sheer volume of traffic means damage still occurs.
cheers, SS
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Above I mentioned double artics, but maybe these 25 metre 60 ton trucks would mostly be truck and drawbar trailer combinations for carrying 2 swap bodies. 25 metres wouldn't be long enough to allow 2 max length containers though.
EU regulations have been relaxed to allow rigid buses and coaches up to 15 metres instead of 12. I saw one the other day -Dutch registered I think.
Many towns and cities now have articulated bendibuses, which are 18 metres long.
Cheers, SS
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It isn't the main roads/motorways which will cause the problems, except bridge loading, it will be the manoeuvreability. I live in a small south cotswolds town which has a frozen foods distribution depot. The town is just off the M5, and the depot does make sense for easy Mway access. The depot can only be approach via a series of sharpish bends and narrow roads with buildings lining them.(ie unmovable objects) Both rigid and artics use the depot. The artics only just make it, and can, through no fault of their own, cause traffic chaos. Anything longer just will not go through. How is the driver going to know that his destination is unreachable? The route off the Mway is used to reach the heart of the cotswolds and to put a weight limit ban on would be impractical. The local council see the cars which are parked on the through routes through the town(which makes them single track with the odd passing place) as cheap traffic calming measures. Larger lorries, given the above situation, would cause chaos.
I am not anti lorry, I appreciate the need for them.
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To be honest there are already lots of Depots/Factory's that cannot take vehicles of various different sizes, Some can't accept artics and some can only accept vehicles of certain maximum height. Some depots are in places with 16t weight restrictions. These are issues that are already addressed, when a depot has specific restrictions then those are normally relayed to all the companies that deliver into them. So the double artic would only be used on routes that were known to be able to accept them, I.e. for mainly trunking work between 2 hubs. Getting them stuck in villages would be commercial suicide for the operator of the vehicle.
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Depots usually issue a risk assesment sheet to drivers before departure so they know what to expect, this is written out by an assesment officer who regualry visits the location every year to look at how many & type of risks there are in the area,(supermarkets anyway!).
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Its not what you drive, its how you drive it! :-)
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>How is the driver going to know that his destination is unreachable?
Those type of extra long vehicles should only be allowed on certain roads which are suitable for them. Here in Australia you can only take road trains on routes which Main Roads Dept has gazetted for them. If you are to have extra long vehicles you need to have rules to make sure they are only used in appropriate places. Motorways would be OK and dual carriageways also. B roads and little villages not. The drivers need to be properly trained to operate them and part of that training is to check that they are in a permitted area. The depots would need to be located where the extra long vehicles could get to them legally. If not they would just have to make do with smaller trucks.
Stargazer: you would have been out at Siding Springs, NSW. I am in Wheatbelt WA. Luckily where I am we don't have the outback dirt roads. Most of my driving is on tar seal and major roads at that. It is many years since I went up the Pilbara. All the roads were dirt then and I was in a Mini Moke with 10" wheels. Lots of fun on the corrugations. You couldn't get up enough speed to get the little wheels to ride over the corrugations so you got a real shakeup. With it being an open car you ended up completely coated in red dust. I have never been so dirty in my life!
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In the situation in my town,(see above) the access to the depot, given that the truck is as manoeuverable as a normal artic isn't the problem. There are several parts of the town where parked cars effectivly make it single track with passing places. One of these is on a long right hand bend. It is not possible to see the other end of the bend. To approach the depot, the truck would have to pass the parked cars, they are blocking the lh side of the road. I can see a situation aring where the truck is part way down this road, and meets a stream of traffic coming the other way. In theory, the truck hass to pull in. But where? There isn't a 25m gap, or anything near that. Chaos.
To give you some idea of the mentality of the local "planners", after the hazard above has been negotiated, there is a war memorial used as a roundabout. Before reaching it, there is a bus stop. The "planners" put in a traffic island by it. Now, when a bus is on the stop, nothing can go past it. There have been a few incidents already when the bus driver decides to take his break!
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It can be chaos if a bus or a silly bloke parks right on the corner of where the truck & trailer has to swivel to get in to tesco because being blindside the driver cant see where he or she is reversing! Where are the traffic wardens when you need them!? lol
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Its not what you drive, its how you drive it! :-)
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We still have a system, much reduced insize from what it used to be, that does exactly what these vehicles are intended to do - uses dedicated routes to avoid affecting other traffic, single tractor unit with many trailers, distribution centres for local distribution etc....
It is called a RAILWAY ! That is where the freight should be.
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The current railway network doesn't have many local distribution centres, these would need to be re-established.
Whilst the railways have spare capacity (outside rush hour) it will come down to cost and transporting 40 tonnes of goods door to door is cheaper by road (in pure financial terms).
We need someone a little more far sighted than Darling to integrate our transport network.
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Yep we do have the "Railway", But it does not work!!!!! Parcelforce once spent alot of money on trailers that could be lifted onto a rail car and then railed up to scotland from London. But it was quicker for them to actually be driven half way up and then the one from scotland driven halfway down, the two swap and drive home, journey time was around 9 hours, by train it was taking 15, Also they quite often went missing, one vanished for 3 months in the sidings, thats why the trains are useless for freight. Although quite alot of containers are moved by train, but they tend to be less time criticle.As a final point, how does it get to its final destination? It will have to travel by road at some point, unless you are going to go and pick all your own goods up from the local station!!!
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If I'm not mistaken,Stan Robinson from Staffordshire,tried a double bogey before Denby's ever did,and it was reported in the media at the time,but I can't remember how far back it was.
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If I'm not mistaken,Stan Robinson from Staffordshire,tried a double bogey before Denby's ever did,
>>and it was reported in the media at the time,but I can't remember how far back it was.
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Google supplied some more info on both-:
www.tnn.co.uk/IndustryNews/plonearticle.2005-06-08...9
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The issue with the railway was how it was managed. In principle multiple trailer lorries will operate almost in the same way as trains (will not go into city centres - but trains do). The opnly differnece is one is on a segregated track and the other shares the road with cars.
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