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
I keep bumping into people who claim to read this occaisional rambling section of the website. (It is only here for SEO reasons). I find it deeply troubling that anyone would waste more than 2 breaths on this part of the site. There are so many good things in the other areas. The sad thing is it is always the bloody suppliers who read it and none of the customers!! Have you nothing better to do? Shoo!
A bit like the opening lines of Dickens 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'. It appears that Covid-19 did change a lot of things in the UK market. It broke a lot of trust between supplier and customer. Large companies were forced to use their school Latin to bandy about words like force majeur etc. It was understandable why contracts made had to be broken but it is now more difficult to believe bits of paper will protect you in the future if people you have known for 20 years rip them up when prices move hard against you, or when it is more convenient to walk away from a deal. So I think a lot of this 'trust' is behind the splintering of the UK market. So many new suppliers craving market share. Tolkien would have been proud. Pleased to give him a name check even if he went to Oxford. He and Boole are the only two good things to come out of that filthy University.
I was at a lecture recently at which the head of the Institute for Sales said '60 percent of purchase decisions are incorrect'. That goes again to the heart of Trust. Presumably 60 percent of the market put their trust in someone who gave them the wrong advice and said 'Trust Me'. Once again that goes back to the splintering of the UK market and the number of new comers trying to get to our shores. Certainly if these new entrants get any time with a base in the UK they should see some success. So it was an interesting time - for Newton it was the best of times. We had a huge set of results during and after Covid. Will it be the worst of times? Well as a dealer (aka whore) we have to roll with the changes. It is those with fixed postions who win during steady times and then lose during rapid change. At Newton we love change. So if some of the Turkish companies find market here - that will be interesting. There are Chinese trailers landing in useful numbers - we have bought some and I cannot tell them apart. So plenty of change and we shall have to work our way through it. I am glad we have the 40 per cent of the market who gave us their trust and got it right........
Posted by Andrew on 09/09/2024
STAS are a stand-out European superstar in the world of tipping trailers, who you can trust. They have challenged themselves to create some absolutely mahoosive computer models with years worth of clever engineering time and vast investment. The STAS engineering department has 20 Engineers dedicated to top class performance. This performance involved collaborative work with Belgium Universities and the technically most advanced suppliers. To what end?. To create a multi-nested model of safety performance. This new knowledge is only possible to simulate with huge computational power and newest available and in-house built software.
STAS have advanced using whole trailer analytical techniques to a full DIN tilt test model; a full ISO model and most importantly for the UK market a full IRTE Guideline Class A Tilt Test performance. This new STAS GPT has heritage that a multi-generational family company brings to the party of both aluminium and steel chassis engineering. With 60 years of unbroken manufacturing, constructing thousands of tipping trailers per annum for all weights in all markets using data from Class A Chobham tests of the past. So to trust a 'Class A Tilt Test standard' then you have to invest vast time, energy and engineering resources to fully understand your product performance. The new STAS GPT meets this Halo Standard. Meet the Halo at Newton Trailers.
Posted by Andrew on 01/07/2024
State Of the Union
Is it just me or does the world seem super topsy turvey at the moment?
The Game of Thrones of the tipping trailer market are revolving once again and the Europeans seem set to make another move in the UK. Partly due to the lack of sales in Europe and partly because the UK is the second largest trailer market in Europe and arguably has been ignored for so long. So Schmitz, Wielton, Krone, and then a whole batch of Turkish groups are showing excitement in making trailers for us.
From the Newton seat the market appears to be at an historic low - or perhaps we are just playing a bad game of it. Fruehauf are resurgent and powering forwards under MV ownership. So it is time to roll up our sleeves and get better - a good Spring clean then and prepare our game for the Summer harvest.
So once again a reminder that this Blog Post - so unread and so unused - is just the ramblings of an old man's mind and should not be used in a court of Law and as the Spring heats up may I say God Bless to all my customers and wish you all joyous sticky toffee puddings and warm beer.
Posted by Andrew on 26/03/2024
