Porthaul adds PBS A-doubles

Victorian transport company Porthaul recently took delivery of four innovative and PBS-approved A-doubles. The combinations were the result of a collaboration between the company and two MaxiTRANS brands, Freighter and Hamelex White.

The trailers have a modular design that sees aluminium tubs from Hamelex White mounted on lightweight Freighter skels, while the tag trailer utilises a Freighter dolly.

They're the latest in several PBS-approved trailers developed by MaxiTRANS for Porthaul, and Porthaul General Manager, James Williamson, says they deliver numerous benefits.

"The fact that all parts of the trailer came from MaxiTRANS made the process a lot cleaner than going to two or three different suppliers to provide the separate dolly, skel and bin components," he says.

"It meant I only needed one company who could coordinate the whole job for me. They put a team of engineers at my disposal to work together on the project, from a dedicated PBS expert to skel and tipper engineers.

"Using their Solidworks 3D CAD design software, MaxiTRANS was able to simulate the trailers in action, ensuring they would work as intended before manufacturing began."

The innovative combination is designed to allow the trailers to 'tip through' their contents when loaded onto the tipping ramp in Portland, Victoria. The sliding dolly allows the front trailer to be backed up directly onto the rear trailer. The doors of the front and rear trailer then swing open together when the tipping ramp is raised to allow product to tip through from the front trailer, all the way out the rear door of the rear trailer.

The modular design also allows the trailers to be used in different combinations based on the type of application they will be put to, giving Porthaul a high degree of flexibility.

"We work a lot with woodchips, transporting around two-and-a-half million tonnes a year," says James.

"But there are only two tipping ramps we work with in Victoria and if they break down we need to be able to put our equipment to different uses.

"These A-doubles can transport pretty much anything we want, from hauling woodchips, grain or fertiliser in the tubs, to removing the tubs to transport logs. We've diversified but haven't had to add more equipment. In fact, we've taken about 20 per cent of our combinations off the road, because this configuration gets it done."

James says he has achieved an 81 tonne GCM with the combination – an additional seven-tonne gain over his previous quad-quad Super B-doubles and 14 tonnes more than a standard B-double.

At James's request, MaxiTRANS has packed the trailers full of the latest technology, including full auto greasing, an Electronic Braking System (EBS), Central Tyre Inflation (CTI) and weight gauges.

"We purposely sourced the best products to go into these trailers, which have now got pretty much everything you can imagine in them," James says.

"Most of the technology also helps improve our driver safety, like the weight gauges, which send readings directly to the driver via a display in the cab so they don’t have to get out into the forest when we're working in the plantations."

The inventive design of Porthaul's modular A-double combination earned the company a nomination for an 'Investment in Technology' award as part of the VTA Australian Freight Industry Awards – a just reward for having the confidence to take on a new concept. James says he's satisfied that the financial rewards delivered by the trailers will be equally as good.