TRANSPORT IN EUROPE
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Page 47
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Swing to road transport for Europe's farm produce
by Robert Richards
ROAD HAULAGE will soon be asked to carry a much bigger share of Europe's agricultural output. That was the conclusion of speakers from countries as far apart as Sweden and Spain when they presented papers at a recent international transport conference in Zaragoza.
They also agreed that bigger and more sophisticated lorries will be needed, that farm-to-market container services are the coming thing and that turn-round times (and labour forces) will be greatly reduced through increasing mechanization.
Some speakers forecast, however, that farmers would soon be doing more local haulage themselves as they replaced agricultural tractors with small lorries equipped for a variety of farm jobs.
Prof Harald A. Son Moberg, of the National Swedish Research Institute in Uppsala, was convinced that, with wages rising in Sweden three or four times faster than equipment costs, lorries would become bigger, faster and fitted with more mechanical aids to increase their versatility. Higher first cost, and heavier unladen weight, would be more than offset by savings in total wages and increased utilization.
Prof D. Ing. Georg Segler, of Stuttgart University, told me in a private interview that containers would become an increasingly important factor in agricultural transport, being loaded on to trailers or semi-trailers at the farm or site and hauled direct to their ultimate sales point by special tractor units. There were, he said, only a handful of trucks of this type in Germany, but at least 150 on French roads. They used a modular system with great labour-saving possibilities.
Open-Top containers
Agricultural holdings in Europe are getting ever larger and Prof Segler is convinced that this will speed the introduction of containers loaded direct at the farm and bypassing all the intermediate transport and handling which exists today. His paper detailed the spreading use of demountable open-top containers of 7 to 12 tons gross weight, which are dropped at field sites when empty and collected by skeletal-chassis lorries when full.
The professor gave as an example a co-operative concern using one vehicle and eight 7-ton-payload containers for local hauls of 17km (about 11 miles). Using each container 1.5 times a day, 3600 tons could be moved in 20 days.
He said that in both France and Sweden (as in the UK) there was growing use of demountable bodies with simple pick-up systems requiring no external ,loading apparatus.
Prof Segler was also emphatic that all new agricultural holdings should be planned with the fuller use of lorries in mind, and that professional hauliers could probably offer specialized services at lower cost than the farming organization itself.
Prof Moberg agreed that the road haulier
was best placed to provide t1 farm-to-depot or farm-to-market transpcn and said that this trend was firm. established in Sweden.
Explaining the advantages of the ne farm-container systems which are beir introduced, Prof Moberg said the late development was "system wagons" usir open-topped containers on special vehicli having built-in hydraulic lifting gear. The! were versatile and could be used on boi internal and external farm transport.
There was general agreement that tt development of non-manual handlin methods was the most striking developmei in Continental agricultural transport — tl spreading use of blower systems for gra and feedstuffs and the rapid adoption lorry-mounted cranes. Prof Moberg thougl all lorries would eventually have to be s equipped, and adaptations of th chassis-mounted crane would aid th movement of palletized produce on farm Pallets were now widely used for th produce in Sweden.
As in Britain, bulk milk collection b road tankers is now the accepted method i Sweden, and where access is too poor fc tankers the milk cooler tank is mounted o wheels and hauled out to the nearest roa for transfer of its contents to the tanker.
Pallets with backs The increasing use of pallets i agriculture was emphasized in a paper b an industrial engineer, Sr Jose Fake Calatayud, of the Valencia firm c Transportes Fruteros del Mediterraneo S25 known as Transfume. This company usi pallets extensively in the Valencia area an has developed a type called the "needle This has a normal base but also has a te back support so that boxes can be stack( to about 12ft high. This support can 1 lifted vertically and when left in position lorry can be loaded direct from a ship i 15min, and vice versa.
Sr Falgas said that ships used to hand the greater part of the Port of Valencia annual 130,000 tonnes of onion export 5,000 tonnes of grapes and 50,000 tonnes rf other fruit and vegetables, but now road rehieles take the major part to other Furopean countries. The speed in loor-to-door transport was a main factor, )ut road transport had other advantages which neither ships nor railways could natch.
Rohl) trailers not viable Answering a question from Prof )owning. of Canada, Sr Falgas said that hr transport of fruit by ships within the viediterranean he did not consider ro /ro railers a viable proposition. There was as 'et no standardization of tractive units in he ports, so the unit had to be shipped with he trailer.
Another reason was that, unlike the ;ystem in Canada where trailers were run an to railcars for piggybacking, the 'chime/time relationship in cargo ships had treat economic importance; any system Bing the Canadian method would require a ;hort sea route, identical haulage units at gtch end, and other facilities which did not iet exist — though they would be welcome mice a viable system could be set up.
One point made by many speakers was .hat in many countries the use of farm .ractors and trailers for road hauls, even ocally, was on the way out. The greater lexibility and utilization outweighed the :Uglier first cost — a factor which would -esult in a much increased demand for or-ries in rural communities.
Prof Moberg said this was a trend which would accelerate as wages rose, leading to :he lorry becoming firmly established as a Dart of farm equipment, or provided by ontractors.