The UK road transport industry is growing, with May seeing substantial new orders heading to the region from Schmitz Cargobull, Don Bur and Cartwright.
UK-based parcel delivery company, Whistl, has signed a contract worth £2.5 million (€2.8 million) for 41 new Don-Bur double deck trailers leased through TIP.
Whistl reportedly worked with Don Bur on the design of the trailer to ensure it was multipurpose and could take various sizes of containers required to transport mail, large letters, and parcels.
“The introduction of the new trailers is part of our continued commitment to invest in the business to ensure operational efficiency and improved service to our customers. We are a growing business, not only in our core sector of business mail but also in our parcel services,” said Whistl CEO, Nick Wells.
“The new trailers give us scalable and flexible infrastructure that can handle the increasing mix of items customers handover to us to process. Importantly, our drivers have been through training on the new and improved operational aspects of the trailers and have welcomed their capability to reduce downtime and make their job easier.”
Meanwhile, horticultural specialist Midas Transport is expanding its business into multi-temp transport for the first time with a Schmitz Cargobull multi-temp reefer.
The Spalding-based business, which has a 25-strong fleet largely made up of Schmitz Cargobull units, will use the new asset to deliver plants to Wyevale garden centres and high street chain Wilko, and potatoes and vegetables to supermarkets and wholesalers.
“We’ve been buying Schmitz Cargobull trailers for years because they are well built and easy to maintain. Now we’re moving into multi-temp work, they were the natural choice,” said Mick Smith, Managing Director at Midas Transport.
“By choosing Schmitz Cargobull, we have made the investment risk-free. We’ll get a lot of use out of the trailer and know when the time comes to sell in the future – even if that’s in ten years’ time – it will have a better resale price than the competitors.”
West Midlands-based transport company, Aspray 24, ordered another large number of rigid vehicle curtain sided bodies from Cartwright are part of the operator’s ongoing replacement programme. Currently the Aspray 24 fleet comprises 400 powered vehicles and 160 trailers.
The majority of the vehicles are 7.5 tonne rigid curtain-siders with tail lifts plus a number of 18 tonne rigid curtain-siders, which will be delivered from July through to November.
Richard Catley, Fleet Services Director of Aspray 24 commented: “Cartwright is the type of company that you deal with in the knowledge that they never walk away from a challenge. At the end of the day you are as good as your product and the after sales service from Cartwright is really good.”
Further north in Cheshire, storage and distribution company, Farrall’s Group, has placed an order for 10 new curtain-siders from Tiger Trailers, plus its first three rigid truck bodies.
Tiger built the trailers to custom specifications defined by Farrall’s Group, with features such as a reinforced headboard, Tiger’s new front aerofoil, flush rear doors, galvanised chassis, and additional hook points to help with multiple loading configurations.
As the trailers are expected to regularly move newspaper and paper rolls, Tiger added its ‘over chassis beam’ floor design which sits above the I-beam to guarantee a flat floor running the full width and length of the trailer to ensure that no imprints are left on paper products during transport, plus improves weather-proofing and contributes towards enhanced health and safety.
“We chose Tiger due to the proven service and quality we experienced from them. The trial trailer performed outstandingly since entering service, so putting in an order for a further 10 trailers and three bodies was an easy decision,” said Managing Director of Farrall’s Group, Jim Perry.
“It’s crucial that we’re able to order equipment to a specification that is going to work for us. Tiger was able to look carefully at each of our requirements and ensure they were met; delivering all of the new assets within our specified timeframe.”
Perry added, “We’d been to visit Tiger Trailers on several occasions before placing this order, and were really impressed with what we saw. We like to support British manufacturing, and working with a company like Tiger Trailers makes it that much easier.”