Our MD John Fletcher and former LD Commercial Director Chris Curzon, who has just retired after 23 years with the Peterborough-based dry freight trailer builder and repairer, met up to talk about how our two companies work together.
Our trailer fleet stands at around 8,000, 60% of which are on long-term contracts with customers and the balance available for rent. The decision to buy exclusively LD dry freight trailers in 2013 coincided with a refocus on our trailer business.
“Trailers had largely been very much secondary until that point, but we made a decision to start promoting trailers as a central part of our overall offer,” said John. “We were a heavily tractor-based business, and no one looked at trailers as the workhorses that they are. They were allowed to age and there wasn’t much focus on the design or the components that went into them.”
As a result, our trailer fleet had begun to show its age, with no definitive replacement cycle. Together with LD, we came up with a plan to speed up the replacement of older trailers and renew a substantial part of our trailer fleet.
“Chris came up with a fleet cleanse programme involving substantial part-exchanges of our older trailers that we couldn’t remarket,” said John. “We’ve now got the trailer fleet to where we want it to be, so we can rotate it every five years with a constant flow of really good spec trailers.
“In peak years, we have bought over 1,000 units and the least we have done is 600 in a year. At any one time we have 200 to 300 trailers on order or in progress.”
Fleet of foot
Having this constant flow of trailers gives us the flexibility to either push them into the rental fleet or change the spec at short notice to meet the specific needs of a contract hire customer.
John continued: “The underpinnings of the trailer remain the same. We wouldn’t change running gear or brakes, but it might end up with a variation in height or the colour of the curtains.
“That means that any mobile engineer can go out anywhere in the UK and, if he comes to a Dawsongroup trailer, it will have the same underpinnings. If he needs a brake chamber or a slack adjuster, he’s got one.”
That standardisation also extends to the rest of the trailer components, greatly simplifying repair and maintenance.
“Dawsons’ engineering department along with LD were the first to introduce a Dawsons standard wiring diagram and a Dawsons standard braking system,” said Chris. “Every one was done exactly the same way.”
While it might seem odd for an asset management business the size of Dawsongroup to have a single supplier for all its ambient trailers rather than playing the field, John said the arrangement delivers huge benefits.
“The deal of the day is OK,” he said. “But what we get over time is trust and there are things built into the trailer, so we don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time. We spend a lot of a time working with LD on how we build more quality into the product and that’s really important for us.
“If we can prevent a corner getting knocked off five years down the line, we’ve saved an argument over a charge and mitigated a cost for our customer. It also enhances LD’s position in the used market and, over the years that we have worked together, that has always been at the forefront.”
Curzon, who worked at Dawsongroup ‘a few years’ before joining LD, says that certainly over the last decade the company has bought the highest spec equipment, and this has helped us build relationships with suppliers and customers.
“Many of our component suppliers have introduced their new products through ourselves and Dawsongroup,” he said. “They were the first to go with TrCM+ (Haldex’s Safe Parking trailer rollaway prevention system) and were 18 months ahead of everyone else with LED lights. By having that constant influx of new equipment, it has been easier to do that than with a stop-start situation we have seen with other companies.
“We have picked up significant business from people who have taken our trailers on rent from Dawsons. About half of the 50 biggest operators in the Motor Transport Top 100 are companies we started supplying new equipment to after Dawsons supplied them with an LD trailer.
“Twenty years ago, LD was doing fewer than 1,000 trailers a year, with a reputation for dealing with small- to medium-sized hauliers. The biggest single order LD had ever taken before 2003 was for 80 trailers.
“Once we started dealing with Dawsons, it gave us the opportunity to go after a bigger market and deliver the 100 or 200 unit orders.”
Boxing clever
We also worked closely with LD to improve the design of the humble box van to make it stronger and more resistant to damage.
“We reduced interior damage to just about nothing almost overnight,” said Chris.
“If you look at the market today, almost all the major manufacturers use the LD-style product. That is a testament to Dawsons and it did us a massive favour in that we have been able to supply that product to all our customers.
“Some of those trailers are still on the road today after 20 years’ service.”
Around 45% of our trailer fleet are curtainsiders with the remainder being a mix of box vans, flats, skeletals and fridges.
“We have quite a large refrigerated fleet, which at the moment is off the table for LD,” said John. “But who knows for the future?”
As part of the Polish-owned Wielton Group, LD has access to all types of trailers built by other group companies.
“We are always looking at new models,” says Chris. “We are bringing in some skeletals and flats for Dawsons. The group produces all types of trailer - except fridges - in Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Poland, so we have a wide mix. It’s probably the biggest tipper manufacturer in Europe so there’s lots for us to go after.
“Fridges are on the agenda and will probably be brought to market in the next 12 to 18 months.”
Green dream
With the current focus on the environment, Dawsongroup is now working with LD to make trailers which use less materials, utilise reusable componentry and are more recyclable.
John said: “We have to think about the environmental impact and how much is reusable. One of the things we are working on is to find an alternative to GRP and still make trailers that are usable and affordable.”
Aerodynamic trailers were at one time claimed to be making a contribution to saving the planet through reduced fuel consumption, but Chris said that, while they may have looked good, there was in reality very little fuel saving.
“We spent £100,000 testing 4m trailers at Mira and proved there was no fuel saving,” he said. “A lot of the bigger operators bought into the marketing to enhance their own image. There is nothing wrong with that but the reason you don’t see those trailers any more is that they’ve realised it isn’t cost effective.
“On a double-deck trailer, if you’re prepared to compromise load space, there are aerodynamic advantages to curving the front of the roof. But it’s pointless if you’ve sacrificed the first four pallets.”
We, at Dawsongroup, were early adopters of Axscend trailer tracking technology, first fitting the system back in 2008. While these units do have a battery fitted it lasts for up to 10 years without recharging. But we’re investigating the use of roof-mounted solar panels for other uses.
“In the refrigerated sector, there are advantages without a doubt if the fridge unit is electric,” John said. “For a dry freight trailer there’s no benefit at the moment. But if the tractor goes battery electric, are we going to have to spread the weight of batteries across the trailer?
Then it would become more interesting.
The pillar-less curtainsider
Lawrence David’s unique pillar-less curtainsider trailer has been around for 45 years and was designed to give unrestricted access to the load space to make it easier, safer and quicker to load and unload along the full length of the trailer.
Chris estimates that over 150,000 have been built in that period. “In the early days it was a registered design but that expired in 1988,” he said. “The original concept was for carrying 10m lengths of timber from Boston and it slowly grew for customers like kitchen manufacturers who needed to carry work surfaces. But the real catalyst for growth was in the late 1990s when health and safety became a bigger issue.”
A conventional curtainsider uses pillars along the side of the trailer to support the roof and these are always under compression. “To release the pillars to move them out of the way you have to take the tension off and that is likely to cause problems,” said Chris. “Injuries to fingers and heads have occurred many times. So, companies like Walkers Crisps and DS Smith were the catalyst for developing the pillar-less curtainsider. Complete access was just part of it – it was all about health and safety.”
Chris believes that our enthusiastic adoption of the LD pillarless concept was a big attraction for operators to take trailers from the company, helping it grow its trailer business.
“Many people have copied the pillar-less design, but how long have they been building them and how many have they built? Nothing compared to us. We are the only company with that long experience of building the pillar-less design that has been used to carry everything from crisps to concrete blocks. We give a 10-year structural warranty and there is no other manufacturer that can offer that.”
Given the extra strength that is required for a fully self-supporting roof, it’s surprising that the pillar-less weighs no more than a conventional curtainsider and it can be built into a 15.65m longer semi-trailer and even a double-deck trailer using the same design that has remained unchanged for 45 years.
Early adopters of EN 12642-XL
Lawrence David was one of the first UK trailer manufacturers to build trailers to the EN 12642-XL European load securing standard that was first published in 2006.
The standard was controversial at the time as many operators wrongly believed that trailers meeting the EN XL standard did not need additional load restraint as the curtains, doors and front bulkhead were strong enough to retain the load.
LD’s ArmourSheet ‘Plus’ XL load bearing curtains surpass EN 12642-XL and were designed by company founder Lawrence Marshall and his team over 45 years ago.
“If you look back to 2004, we didn’t have to do anything to our trailers to comply with EN 12642-XL,” said Curzon. “The design was already in place for the front bulkhead, the rear doors and the curtains. Everything was load bearing even then and we changed nothing to meet EN 12642-XL, unlike our major competitors who had to completely redesign their trailers.”
John commented that many operators still don’t fully understand what loads an EN 12642-XL trailer can safely carry without internal restraints. “It only applies to positive-fit loads,” he explains. “If you look around at industries like used tyres, they completely abuse trailers and their curtains. We don’t see as many as we used to, but a lot of people still misuse trailers. Most of our arguments three or four years down the line from build are about abuse rather than a product specification issue.”
Published by kind permission of Motor Transport