STAS Halo Trailers - Safety First
Has there ever been more bullshit 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 bullshit 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 'beer studies' at Oxford University). Some of those boardrooms actively chose to lie about 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 a straight lie 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 white wash through to our current claim on a very now evolved - lighter thinner chassis.
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 bullshit - 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
