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Give The Bodybuilder A Chance!
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Alan Havard
A.M.Inst.T.
S0 YOU have taken delivery of your new tipper! Since it represents a substantial investment, the luestions of the most suitable wheelmse, make of chassis, number of axles, yre equipment, angle and direction of ip, and body material have already )een settled. You have presumably tad the expert advice of your bodymilder and supplier on the subjects )f the make of chassis and tip gear, Lnd the body design most suitable for 'our work.
Or have you? It is not over-fulsome o state that the almost inexhaustible alents of the manufacturing industry an place at your disposal virtually any ype of tipping vehicle, if, having aken delivery of a tipper, you still lave doubts as to whether it has the ight body, you have only yourself to )1ame for any bodywork troubles that :ome your way.
Ruining Standard Bodies
One of the easiest ways of quickly uining a standard tipper body is to xpect it to stand up to all sorts of iork and all sorts of loads. There is, f course, and always will be, a very arge need for tippers fitted with standrd bodies—but the term standard does lot necessarily imply "maid of all vork."
Unless you are the type of tipper rperator who buys his vehicles solely vith an eye to initial cost and proceeds to work them to death within six months or a year, you can save yourself a great deal of trouble and expense by going to the bodybuilder and supplier in the first place and asking for their advice on what type of body best suits your requirements, and the loads you want to carry.
A supplementary question that is worth posing is this: "Do you do all you can to ensure that the life of the body on your vehicle is prolonged for as long as it can be? "
Tipping work is inevitably the most damaging task that a bodybuilder can be called upon to cater for. But in the end it is the treatment received after the vehicle has been delivered that really decides the length of body life. I would, therefore, like to draw your attention to this question of body life and mention a few points that might be worth bearing in mind in that respect. and the treatment they receive during loading and unloading. A third cause of body damage I believe to be through thoughtless driving in an unladen condition over rough country, which sets up stresses on the chassis members and body mounting points. It is, however, a debatable point.
Bigger Tippers
There is a noticeable trend for hauliers to seek bigger, heavier tippers. The majority fall into the 5-7-ton carrying capacity class, usually mounted with a 6-cu.-yd. body. However, a great many are now in the " heavy " class, being sixor eight.
wheelers. Third-axle conversions are becoming more common, and articulated tippers are not infrequently used.
This Itrend is obviously brought about by the desire to carry more and
more it4load on a vehicle—and the bigger the body gets, the more load operators try to cram on to it. The
result is frequently disastrous.
I would repeat that tipping bodies are highly specialized pieces of equipment, and their builders are possibly more like engineers than bodybuilders. Assuming, therefore, that you want some reasonable life from your vehicle, it seems silly not to take advantage of the specialist advice which will be only too will ngly given if you seek it.
A typical example of what can happen o standard all-steel bodies was the experience of Mr. W. G. Eales, of W. G. Eales (Transport), Ltd., Wellingborough, Northants. Carrying opencast iron ore, he found he had to use standard bodies because of a low weight restriction on an unclassified access road. The ore was loaded from a dragline and often dropped into the body from some height.
The all-steel body soon bore a crop of dents in the floor between bearers, uprights were knocked out of line, tailboards became distorted and so in turn distorted side panels, chains of the drag itself caught on corner pillars.
It is, incidentally, possible to avoid damage from drag chains catching on corner pillars. At least one company wraps by 1-in. flat strip round the bottom end of the post to the tail gate, thus allowing chains to slide past the right angle formed by body floor and corner post.
Subsequently, Mr. Eales called in a body specialist, and a scow-ended steelbody with sandwich floor was evolved. The cross bearers were closed up, then a solid timber floor was laid, and over this an " armoured " steel floor was fixed. The result was an immensely strong body capable of absorbing, through the timber, some of the impact. The prototype body, incidentally, outlived three chassis! Such service is typical of that offered by all tipperbody specialists.
Another frequent area of damage is the tailboard. If a scow end is unsuitable and a tailboard is therefore essential, the drop type of tailboard hinged 5 in. or 6 in. above the floor becomes fouled by pieces of rock or clay.
An answer is to provide a high hinge point, or to specify hinge points below the floor level.
There is no doubt that the biggest single cause of tipper body damage through dropping heavy loads into the body and hitting it with the grab of bucket of the loading machinery. One section of the body that takes particular punishment in this way is the top of the side panels. A means of alleviating impacts at that point is to incorporate, at the edge, a rolled section channel to take the clouts.
Another possible way of minimizing this type of damage is, as at least one alloy specialist does, to use a Welsh Hat section (narrow at the top and widening out towards the base), which tends to turn impacts into glancing blows. This particular type of side iection also helps to ward off the type pf damage caused when the vehicle is run along the side of fixed equipment at the site.
Yet another thought is to get the site oading operatives to place a layer of ;mall stone on the floor of the body )efore the main load comes aboard. This layer helps to absorb the impact ›f the big stuff.
Abrasive loads, such as coke breeze, :ause abnormal wear to the body floor, and this can be retarded by fitting leavier gauge plate, at least at the rear )f the floor. Sometimes alloy bodies ;offer wear from abrasive loads and :ventually the heads of retaining bolts ire found to be standing proud where he alloy has been scraped away. iowever, operators to whom this has iappened are not unknown to have .emarked that, notwithstanding, the illoy body was still a good investment.
Quite common on muddy sites is for he driver of a bogged-down tipper to get a bulldozer to push him out. At he same time the " dozer " pushes the ailboard in and bows the body sides aut.. Driver education is the answer tere (as it is in so many instances). It s the answer, too, in those cases where )odies are damaged because the vehicle is driven with them in the raised position. A warning device in the cab will stop this type of damage.
Sticky loads can be tipped better by utilizing a scooped body and a high angle of lift. But beware that tailboard! Make sure the hinge points are high enough to avoid fouling.
Some loads, such as hot coke, have a high acid content and corrode a steel body. The answer to this problem is, again, a talk with the bodybuilder before the order is placed. Aluminium alloy might be a better material, whilst plastics are also worth considering.
Plastics—usually resin reinforced glass-fibre—is a material that is becoming more popular in many spheres of bodybuilding, and tipper bodies are no exception. There are now several specialist bodybuilders with considerable experience of plastics, and there are now in existence several tipper bodies that have very fine wear records indeed.
An alternative use for plastics might be as a floor lining, unless hot loads are to be carried.
Plastics is durable, can be colourimpregnated, is easy to repair and is lighter than steel. Tipping bodies up to 24-ft. long are now being produced in plastics. Such bodies can be either panelled or moulded complete.