Palmer & Harvey trunk ‘Snacks’ through the night.

Palmer & Harvey trunk ‘Snacks’ through the night.

With their distinctive red and cream livery Palmer and Harvey vehicles of all size are a familiar sight to many of us, but they are rarely seen during the night unless you happen across them on the motorways between Bristol and Swansea trunking their demountable refrigerated bodies for onward delivery around Wales the following day. 

Most companies would question the use of demountables when considering refrigerated bodies, sighting the loss of payload as a major stumbling block and for many that may be the case, but for those who distribute small and often loads to retail outlets weight is not necessarily the deciding factor.  With this type of operation priorities tend to change to reliability of service and the efficient use of their vehicles, which as in this case can mean reducing the stem mileage to the minimum wherever possible.

In the case of Palmer & Harvey the demountable drawbar combinations trunk loaded bodies through the night from Bristol to Swansea for onward delivery using a mixture of 4x2 chassis and the 6x2 drawbar prime movers which are double shifted and run as solo distribution vehicles during the day.

The chassis of choice are Mercedes Antos 2540 6x2 and 1825 4x2 equiped with air suspension which is utilised as the lifting medium for the demountable system.

Working closely with Paneltex Ltd who were the end users preferred bodybuilder, Wheelbase Engineering Ltd developed their demountable system to allow the two products to be integrated as much as was practically possible by the introduction of features unique to the application and requirements of the overall specification.  In addition there was also the integration of retractable tail lifts fitted to each chassis to be considered along with all of the exterior mounted ancillary equipment, hence positioning of equipment became a critical factor when considering the day to day use of the vehicles.