It is not often that this blog takes a serious note but if there was ever a reason then this would be it:
James Smith died on Saturday 26th July 2025
James, born, son of the village milkman/dairyman in Harlington, Bedfordshire - literally cycling with eggs and dairy products around the villages to sell - becoming a local seed merchant to farmers, with a side bar hussle in pigs, eggs, and turkeys. He took risks and grew the farming with the returns from the haulage business. As the Home Counties needed more houses - James developed and sold old farm barns and land to conversions and new house developments. With his life long partner - Elizabeth - 'the grit in his oyster' - he became a good businessman with many successes - a good friend to many - a good mentor- and a good father to 4 children, and grandfather to 9.
Always known for his fun sense of humour; a non-critical approach; a straightfordwards and unremitting need to get things done at speed; whilst perhaps more importantly selliing with an honesty and integrity that became widely recognised and central to his enterprises.
James attended work at Newton Trailers until his 90th year and his 63rd in the business. He died after a short illness at this ripe old age- well loved and fondly remembered. He would wish me to thank you all - our customers and suppliers for your support. He enjoyed your conversations, chats and time. For those of you who knew him or cared for him please do not be sad - just give him a thought and a smile - he lived a good and virtuous life.
Posted by Andrew on 29/07/2025
So middle of the year - got the blues... what could be better than a nice cheery show at the National Showground - Stoneleigh - the RTX Show. I HATE SHOWS!!!
What could be worse than standing in a field with lots of stale, white, mostly male...... but for some reason I said yes and off we will go. All the usual suspects will be there - Fruehauf, Weightlifter, Colson, SDC etc. So lots of opportunities to grind axes and listen to salesmen explain how bad their hangover was last night. So Newton have a rule - no shows. So why go this year? Well if we have to go to a show then let's at least make it useful for our customers and hopefully give them something they have never seen before, thought about or experienced. Yes we will do it out of a pathetic little exhibition trailer - which like Triggers broom - was very cheap on ebay - but now we have replaced everything - may not do a Clarkson caravan and disintegrate on the way to the show when it hits 45mph.
So back to the 'why' this year? We have a new to UK product - the Knapen moving floor that can do 26,000 liters of bagged liquids one way and pump it out in 12 minutes and then return with 26 tonnes of Anaerobic Digestion Feedstock the other way. Two way full - the holy grail of making money in bulk transport. So that is a first for this show or any other UK show!!
Then we have Europe's number 1 asphalt trailer - the Fliegl Thermotrailer. This offers the safety of horizontal discharge; the temperature control of the best trailer available; and the reliability of not being a moving floor or belt trailer - once again a first for a UK show!!
Last but not least we have a Halo Trailer - a new total safety concept trailer from STAS - it is the first trailer to have reached 9.2 degrees IRTE tilt test as a production trailer for 44 tonnes and to have passed the even harder german DIN test. This is the new 2025 production model.
So come and throw shit at us at the RTX - I'll show you mine......
Posted by Andrew on 10/06/2025
Love Island
We have a core program here at Newton Trailers called 'Infinite Joy'. Basically we recognise that 'working for the man' is not deeply motivating. At Newton our goal is to have everyone swing their legs out of bed each morning; and just as their totsies hit the floor they get a good feeling. That feeling is - if I have to go to work - well at least I work at a good place that cares about me.
So it is 'Infinite Joy' week again - we rotate the weekly focus. And as all our employees are automatically enrolled in a wrap around private health package - whatever your role in the company ; this week is TEETH week. We were all so impressed by the smiles in Love Island that it was obvious that the Love Island that is Newton Trailers site in Ridgmont also needs to have a TEETH Week.
So we have asked all the unit managers to audit their team and ensure that they are aware of the teeth health care benefit; that they have had a hygenist inspection or have one booked - free of charge. If they need free time off to attend they can have it.
So we might not look good in a thong but we should all have good teeth health here at Newton - Infinite Joy.
Posted by Andrew on 18/02/2025
STAS Halo Trailers - Safety First
Has there ever been more information from more manufacturers in Europe and the UK manufacturers than their claims of tilt test capability?
Tipping trailers are basically scaled up wheel barrows? They move their load by lifting the center of gravity up to a point where the forces overcome the adhesion to the floor and side walls of the trailer body and the material then moves out of the box under the force of gravity. Simples? Nope not simples?
If you scour the literature for which standards exist to judge whether you make a 'good' or 'bad' or 'amazing' tipping trailer then you will get bored very quickly. When a tipping trailer is in use in the UK under what law is it operating? Road regulations? - only if it is on the public highway? Machinary Directive? Possibly but we are no longer signed up to EU directives after Brexit. CE self approval? Nope Brexit and probably never was. So what is the contracted standard when you purchase a tipping trailer? Well I have sat in plenty of boardrooms of UK and European suppliers and there is plenty of exciting stuff spoken not just from the CEO or MD but also from good engineers. Pretty much it would come down to what the stated purpose of the trailer was in the sales contract - and then if the worst happens - line by line interpretation by a High Court Judge (who studied zippo engineering whilst doing their studies at Oxford University). Some of those boardrooms actively chose to exaggerate their capabilities and I was shocked.
There is a UN Directive from the 1950's; there is a German Industrial Normung (DIN Number) and then there is the hoary old chestnut of the IRTE Guidelines which are ancient and left as 'guidelines to be evolved by new knowledge' and then left stranded by in 2007. Thereafter we are off to the races. I would go so far as to say almost every advertised claim for a trailer meeting IRTE Guidelines - is either an exaggeration or ignorance at best followed by a misunderstanding by any of the staff remaining who can still remember where the sliderule is? So modern websites claiming 'All our chassis make IRTE Class A' are pretty much total horse doo doo. It shows a lack of knowledge in their company as to any of their own trailer engineering. Ask what is a CLASS B standard modelling? Most likely they will not know. So arguably the only 'Standard' that you can test to is the DIN standard. This is technically a lower 'Tilt Angle' but with a higher degree of difficulty to achieve it than a CLASS A IRTE standard.
The engineering hours and calculations to achieve a full understanding of a trailer design and likely real world performance is simply COLOSSAL. You can try it with a fag packet - pretty much all the historic calcs done were glorified back of envelope - until large enough super computers are introduced in 2024! Arguably a fag packet and lots of attempts will work - similar to works of Shakespeare and sufficient monkeys. It will not however tell you the difference in performance between say a Goodyear Tyre and a Michelin Tyre - or indeed even one type of Michelin versus another. It will not tell you performance for every 0.1 bar in the rear most tyre or a fixed floating tipping axle or a JOST Axle bush versus a BPW U bolted axle. Huge computers are the way. So when a manufacturer says their trailers are ALL this or ALL that - it cannot be true - because the engineering is layered with dramatic feed back loops that amplify or dampen sub - systems. Even the sheet system will change the flex of the body and it's progression out of alignment and boom tip over. So even if you have a Super Computer in your bedroom you would have to run the model each time you change ANY ELEMENT of the trailer construction. Why? Because without modelling you will not know the influence of that change. It might be big or it might be small.
Another problem is testing. There are almost zero test centers left in Europe where you can either 'truth' your computer model - or just repeat test your fag packet until you fluke it and get a win. Arguably Spain has the only rentable to public tilt bed in Europe. The UK closed its doors some year ago - another reason why the UK Manufacturers claims of 'All our trailers make Class A etc etc' are unlikely to have been verified with current - tyres, axles, cylinders, sheet systems, floor thickness etc. At best they might be able to say we had something back in 2005 which we tested and we have used that ancient design to wash through to our current claim on a very now evolved - lighter thinner weight optimised chassis. The largest manufacturer of tipping trailers in Germany has it's own in house tilt test bed. Amazing. But it only inclines to a maxium of 5 degrees and cannot therefore prove IRTE or DIN standards.
So onward - it has been a remarkable journey with STAS. Endless hours of research, new engineering maths created, hugely expensive hours of Government super computer time, vast iterations of design, endless questioning of sub-suppliers for the engineering truth not the marketing BS. Then test day in December 2024. Vast amounts of sensors, data logging, LIDAR, load cells, inclinometers all wired up like some mad Frankenstein monster. Yes at 9.3 tilt angle achieved - test stopped - not the limit reached! Yes a DIN standard achieved. This is possibly the only DIN standard on a UK tipping trailer - EVER. All witnessed and certified.
Onward - vast amounts of test data- back fed into the computer models. How did component X or component Y perform. Did it track close to computer model - are we safe? Are we certain? Why did this element not correlate - why did this element correlate? Then back to more and now continuous improvements.
Onward to sales and marketing. Out come the Facebook neigh sayers. The armchair experts from over there - 'look it was in Spain so cannot be 44 tonne' comment; it was not loaded - look etc etc. Or better still ' our 2005 trailer beat 9.3 degrees - - yeh now did it. Was it a production model - why is there a 10 tonne 6 x4 on the front etc etc?
But what we can now do is praise the STAS engineering team who have just kept their heads down and done what no one else has done. Achieve above 9.3 degree tilt test IRTE real life pass - on a homolgated every day standard STAS trailer AND a DIN pass which is even harder. So if you want sales talk- then go to the others - and challenge them for their Witnessed Certificates for the trailer you are actually purchasing or if you want real life performance purchase a STAS.
Posted by Andrew on 03/01/2025
Mink Coat and No Knickers
and Merry Christmas to you all too. We don't normally give a shout out to the Accounts and Numbers people in our lives - unloved and unwashed as they are. We, as have every other company on the planet, have been embedding AI systems into our internal accounts for 4 years now. This has allowed us to reduce our accounts activity to just 40 minutes each day for 1 person - down from 3 people. 'Way hey' you might say - or 'what a shite flex etc'. So what is the benefit for you - my lovely suppliers (and customers)?
Well it means we pay our suppliers the same day as we receive the invoice: zero days; nada. Every Business School would be running from this with their head on fire shouting 'NO - are you mad?' Well - a little perhaps. It means we miss out on millions of pounds of your cash - we do not use you as our bank.
We owe nobody anything - nor have we since 1997. It does mean we have Knickers and we observe most of our competition 'On Stop' or without supply this Christmas whilst walzing around in a Mink Coat. We have lost count of the number or our suppliers that tell us of the manufacturing companies that do not pay them or do not have a proverbial pot to piss in. Not us - that is not our way. We love all of our suppliers and when they give us good service and good products they are paid - SAME DAY.
Merry Christmas and raise a toast to 'Newton Trailers' (who is the one who pays you same day).
Posted by Andrew on 18/12/2024
