It started with a presentation. Back in August, Dayne Iles and Victor Trumper, gave, as part of a quarterly discussion point, a talk on the benefits of roadtrains at Coles Group.
Many of their fellow contractors were present.
Dayne, who spearheads, Tailored Freight, an interstate road freight outfit based in Epping, talked about the 28- and 38-pallet capacity units his team runs out of three destinations: Melbourne, Sydney and Griffith.
While these roadtrains venture into Sydney they rarely reach maximum weight given the load bearing restrictions in place. Coles, as part of their drive for efficiency and lowering emissions, were keen to see more.
The fleet’s latest B-triple was born out of these discussions. The fleet already dispatches several multi-combination units out of Griffith. This new B-triple, however, is designed to get maximum weights from Melbourne into Sydney.
“We opened up a can of worms,” recalls Dayne. “Coles encouraged us to pursue it. But the reality is this: if we can’t get the weight on, then it won’t work.”
Similar challenges vex the likes of Jim Pearson and Ron Finemore, industry luminaries who were also part of the presentations in August.
Reducing the number of trucks on the road while maximising the trailer spaces through additional trailers is not feasible when the concrete and steel structures on bridges doesn’t support the legal weights set out by the NHVR.
“My question is where’s the relevance?” asks Dayne. “There is obviously a lot of restrictions for heavier combinations. When you start reaching bridge assessments based on weight distribution and axle groupings on trailers as we currently do, you risk getting capped.”
Reaping the full benefit of designing, engineering and investing in a roadtrain combination from Melbourne to Sydney will be improbable without input from Performance-Based Standards and road network people to better understand what can and can’t be achieved so that the weights for high productivity combinations are maximised.
At Gundagai, the northbound Hume Highway bridge over the Murrumbidgee River was built in 1977 and limits how some types of PBS vehicles use the route.
The project has received $20 million joint funding from the NSW and Australian governments as part of a planned upgrade of northbound Sheahan Bridge.
Bridges at Seymour and Avenel are also problematic posing headaches for roadtrain operators along the Hume Highway.
This is where Victor Trumper, Managing Director of heavy vehicle engineering specialist Advantia Transport Consulting, comes to the fore.
He says governments often have to be lead on the issue.
“When you’re embarking on these things you’re looking for a good outcome for at least one particular transport operator who is essentially trying to establish a precedent for industry as well,” says Victor.
“The message I try and impart through these projects is the safety credentials these PBS vehicles have. And everyone, let’s say, wants to enable those safety benefits but sometimes they don’t provide the platforms to do so.”
He cites an example from Victoria where there are networks published for A-doubles at 85 tonnes that go as far as the border, yet there is no equivalent for a B-triple.
“It makes you wonder why they are discriminating against a vehicle?” he says.
“Invariably, bridges don’t know if it’s an A-double or a B-triple or a split axle, for that matter, going over it. All it cares about is the axle groups rolling across it and the weight they carry.”
Credit is also due to VicRoads and the Department of Transport and Planning, according to Victor, after it published a range of networks that are relevant to immediate industry needs.
“We’re starting to see a little bit of headway with that,” he says. “As they progressively roll out more and more of these networks it just seems to be the risk profile for approving higher masses is more conservative. That’s what I’ve experienced.”
Direct comparisons made with the A-double networks soon led to the discovery of this type of outlier.
“One of the easiest transitions to PBS could be achieved with coupling up B-double units into a B-triple,” Victor explains.
“You don’t have to get the dolly. There’s essentially a saturation in orders for dollies at present. We don’t seem to be able to get that cut through in general freight for B-triples at this point in time. And they are one of the safest combinations that you can put on the road under PBS.”
It’s something of a lost opportunity according to Victor but one that Advantia has identified for Tailored Freight and many other carriers.
“We’re a consolidation carrier,” says Dayne.
“We go to the farms and pick up all their freight that will go to a DC and instead of giving that to an on-forwarder to take that truck in, we’ll go in with multiple consignments into the DC directly to avoid going via someone else that would then on-forward it with their trucks. We’re essentially creating 50 consignments across seven timeslots with full trailers.”
This is something they will look to scale up on once the benefits of these bigger combinations are better understood. “B-triples really hit the mark in terms of vans, in particular,” says Victor.
“Obviously, you have your Tautliners that come into that as well for general freight. In general freight you can get away with lower masses. Obviously, refrigerated is a little bit different.”
Operators, in Victor’s experience therefore need to get closer to General Mass Limits (GML) or ideally Higher Mass Limits (HML).
“That’s the journey we’ve been on and we now have positive results with that,” he says.
Following ongoing consultation with the Department of Transport and Planning, approval has now been granted to operate Tailored Freight B-triples up to 85.5 tonnes to provide parity across combination options.
“The pathway to achieving this required an evidence-based approach to the Department of Transport and Planning, which in the end was supported,” says Victor.
“Transport for New South Wales has also seen the opportunities and benefits of B-triple access and granted approval to operate on the Hume Highway in NSW.”
A new Kenworth K200 is pulling the B-triple which was built by Freighter Group.
The combination is arranged as a 12x12x22 pallet configuration. It carries fresh produce from regional Victoria and Southeast Melbourne and goes direct into an Eastern Creek facility owned by Coles.
Tailored Freight runs 35 trucks. Three of these are DAFs, with the remainder represented by Kenworth. These are typically T610s and K200s with a couple of new Kenworth K220s recently injected into operations.
The fleet has 62 pieces of trailering equipment. There are six 28-pallet reefers, two 38-pallet reefers, six curtainsiders while the rest are nominal B-double combinations and singles.
It’s all optimised to carry fresh produce out of the Melbourne markets.
This financial year just gone Tailored Freight acquired six new trucks (T610s and K200s) and eight new trailers all of which were growth acquisitions according to Dayne, not replacement sets.
“All of our fleet is 600 horsepower,” he says. “The split between the conventional bonneted truck and cabover Kenworths simply comes down to driver preference. We’re happy to support a driver that wants something.”
On the latest Kenworth K220 Dayne has had the first Australian Thermo King bunk cooler fitted. Thermo King sells approximately 35,000 of these units in the US each year.
The transport refrigeration specialist had not brought the product to Australia previously. Until now.
“We’ve been lucky enough alongside Thermo King to work together on it,” says Dayne. “I have high hopes.”
There’s no reason, what’s more, why the B-triple cannot become the archetypical application for transporting perishables.
“You know, fresh fruit and vegetables are perishables and the more of that you can move at once means there is going to be a better outcome for everyone,” notes Victor.
He believes the profile of general freight is suited to A-double combinations.
“Everyone wants full HML but with general freight you can get away with lower approved masses because they’ve got less density,” says Victor.
“Unless you’re Bevchain, generally speaking you’ve got cereals and toilet paper mixed in with some heavier items but invariably a lot of general freight can be done on a cubic basis. So, they can fill up a truck and still be under-loaded in terms of their overall GCM.”
Even at a GML mass of 79 tonnes operators are going to be hard pressed in habituating maximimum payloads.
“Out of the food bowl of southern New South Wales and northern Victoria you need to cart as close as possible to your HML axle loads,” says Victor.
“We’ve found there’s a lot of people moving general freight on A-doubles and there’s 36.5 metre versions of those. They’ve got their 45-foot trailers. Obviously, you get the versatility as a combination that is published in Victoria. That gets us 85.5 tonnes to the border, and you can get specific approval at that mass into western Sydney and the DCs. It’s a bit of a known quantity now. Everyone is doing that. At this stage, B-triples don’t have that sort of equivalent level of access, whereby automatic approval exists via a NHVR Notice and pre-approved State networks. We now have a way forward to crack through that sort of nut and we’re halfway there in this point of time.”
While fleets must be vigilant not to be cornered into a combination that doesn’t get them the productivity benefits they need, engineers and operators alike, need to be acutely aware of where they might get caught out especially when it comes to freedom of movement notes Victor.
“The sweet spot for that is on Gundagai Bridge travelling north which was once limited to effectively 68.5 tonne and they’re wearing that asset out a little bit quicker,” he says.
“I suppose when you start piecing together the puzzle for a transport task you need to be acutely aware of where you might get caught out and don’t corner people into a combination that doesn’t get the productivity benefits and for that matter the movement that they’re after.”
The Gundagai bridge is now, according to Victor, a success story in terms of the technology that has been adopted.
“A very progressive thinking road manager for NSW, said look, surely we can do something about this, and they put conditions on it and they’re still not absolutely stressing the bridge out,” he says.
“The vehicles have to be 60 metres apart and they have to travel in the left lane. That’s quite doable. Everyone I have spoken to is OK with that. They have the cameras on the bridge to monitor it, so people are adhering to it.”
It’s also an exemplar in how a road manager can identify an opportunity to utilise an asset to its full potential to meet the needs of industry and then obviously have a program to replace it. That’s the underlying handbrake, says Victor, with regards to how bridges are managed these days.
“They currently have this aspirational timeline that bridges have to last 100 years,” he says.
“That’s great. But I think in today’s quickly moving economy I don’t imagine that we need to hold onto heritage assets like bridges anymore. They’re consumables. Just like pavement.”