The French play a cool game...
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THE French are noted for getting round the Law, but they are also clever at keeping up with the new ones. And they proved the point last month....
On the eve of new international legislation governing the operation of refrigerated and insulated vehicles, French manufacturers staged an exhibition of bodywork and equipment.
The centre for this "live show" of refrigerated vehicles was RUNGIS, the location of the new Paris wholesale market.
A common factor in exhibits by ten manufacturers, including well-known names like Chereau, Fourney, Klegefrance and Laloyeau, was the use of sandwich type bodywork using a polyurethane filler between plastics, alloy or stainless steel panels.
Great strides have been made in gaining the extra centimetre or two in clear inside width. Several exhibitors included examples having loaded clearances of 2.44m (8ft fin) in ATP-class A vans. The question of compromise in refrigerated vehicle design (weight/thermal coefficient) is also reflected in unladen weight with some of the 32tonnes semi-trailers checking in at under 7 tonnes unladen.
Chereau, strategically located between the fish, dairy and meat producing regions of Brittany and Normandy, also builds semi-trailers to fill gaps in the standard range available from French makers and exhibited a tri-axle semi-trailer van with air suspension and self-steering third axle.
Fourney, which showed a Class C body (for temperatures down to 18°C) with an inside width of 2.32, is currently working on a large contract for the Soviet Union. Interesting use of Clark Cargovan section in refrigerated vehicle construction was featured by Laloyeau on a Trailor-based chassis for a volume of 65 cu m (2295 cu ft).
Displays of refrigeration equipment—which may account for almost one third of the total cost of a foodcarrying semi-trailer—included examples from the Britishmade Petter range of units with air-cooled engines.
The growth of this specialist section of the French road transport industry was revealed in some recent statistics issued by the FNTR (French Road Transport Federation). Twentyfive years ago, 149 insulated and refrigerated vehicles were registered with the Federation. This figure included 31 semi-trailers. By the beginning of 1976 Frenchregistered units for this type of -traffic totalled 26,500. Of this total just under a third were insulated vehicles with a combined capacity of 36,500 tonnes, 5300 were nonmechanically refrigerated units (ie fitted with eutectic plates or cryogenic gas equipment) and 13,060 were vehicles with their own refrigeration plant.