Semi Trailers come in all shapes and sizes, but they are typically 13.6 metre (or 40ft. in old money) in length. As with rigid trucks, the semi trailers can have any type of body fitted. The most common we see on the roads today are the refrigerated semi-trailers (or refeers) that are taking our food to the supermarkets or the skeletal trailers that are taking goods to and from the ports in shipping containers. These containers – usually either 20ft or 40ft are held in place by Twistlocks. At Truckpages we always have a great choice of used semi trailers for sale. These are the trailers used behind a tractor unit, rather than those towed behind a van or rigid truck in drawbar combination. To view these types of trailers click here.
To drive a tractor and trailer combination, the driver needs to have a class 1 HGV licence. Despite improvements in truck technology, driving a 40ft trailer behind a tractor unit is no easy task. The difficulty increases massively when you have to reverse the trailer.
There are hundreds of thousands of flat, curtainside or refrigerated trailers running around the UK’s roads every day. Read the short guid below for the more specialist types of trailers.
Across Europe, the maximum height for a trailer is typically four metres. This is because the bridges over the motorways are only just over this height in many places. In the UK our bridges are higher, which means that we can have overheight trailers.
This has led to the development of double deck trailers that increase the volume that can be loaded and therefore make each trip more effective and better for the environment.
These double deckers often have internal lifts to enable loading of the upper levels – bear in mind that these types of trailers cannot carry dense loads – think polystyrene rather than bricks!
For certain applications using a tipping semi trailer is better than an eight wheel tipper. The main advantage is that the payload is greater – a tri-axle trailer with a three axle tractor unit can have a combined gross train weight of 44 tonnes compared to just 32 tonnes for an 8×4 tipper.
The disadvantage is that tipping trailers are inherently less stable than a rigid tipper. Forget using tipping trailers in places where the ground is not level and solid. For bulk applications in the waste and recycling industry they are perfect where large amounts of waste need to be transferred from recycling centres to the landfill sites or processing centres and incinerators.
These trailers perform a similar role to a tipping trailer – the load gets emptied by the trailer without the use of a crane or forklift – but it can operate on a wider range of terrains.
An ejector trailer uses a hydraulic ram to push out the load from front to rear, whilst the walking floor or moving floor system has a floor that has been designed to move in such a way as it shuffles the load out of the rear of the trailer.
Typically these trailers can be loaded from above and have applications in the agriculture and waste industries. Manufacturers of these types of trailers are Knapen, Legras, Stas and BMI.
Top semi- trailer manufacturers for the UK market are Schmitz, Fruehauf, SDC, Montracon, Dennison and Don Bur.
If you have to rub shoulders with the wrapped Bentleys and Lamborghinis in premiership football club car parks, then you will need a top of the range, matt black Mercedes Actros L for the job. That’s what Xpression Event Solutions’ new Mercedes-Benz Actros L rig is achieving whilst bringing artificial intelligence-driven performance analysis to some of the UK’s leading professional sports teams. Operated by specialist haulier Xpression Event Solutions, based in North Oxfordshire, the Actros L 1853 works with a purpose-designed mobile laboratory trailer owned by sports science contractor ai.io. Trailer and tractor are finished in eye-catching matt black and…
One of the UK’s premier providers of hotel laundry hire and services, Johnsons Hotel Linen, has started to introduce three fixed double decks and fifty-two rigids to its fleet, with a focus on durability to meet its testing operational schedule. The decision to partner with Tiger Trailers was made after a visit to its specialised facility in Cheshire by Leigh Anscombe, Johnsons’ National Transport Manager. The order for the trailers was placed initially, and the first delivery took place in October 2023, along with twenty 18-tonne rigids, all manufactured with robustness in mind. Anscombe says: “From our first introduction to…
This looks like a great idea. The surface area of a semi trailer is similar to that of a reasonable sized house. Cover this in lightweight solar panels and you have a power source for the truck. If the power generated were sufficient, a truck driving around in a sunny country would never need to stop to refuel or recharge. That’s a big if at this stage. Scania’s unique hybrid truck with a solar panel covered trailer is currently being tested on public roads, as a result of a two-year research collaboration involving Scania, Uppsala University, Eksjö Maskin & Truck,…
Banbury-based bread makers Fine Lady Bakeries has chosen Tiger Trailers to build eight double deck articulated trailers, citing innovation and a fast turnaround time as key factors influencing their decision. Fine Lady Bakeries’ new Tiger trailers, painted in their unique ‘Straw Yellow’ scheme, boast a three-quarter-length moving deck rated to ten tonnes, operated by the manufacturer’s four-ram hydraulic system. The trailers will predominantly serve Fine Lady Bakeries’ main sites in Banbury and Manchester, from where a selection of unbranded bread products is loaded in bread baskets, and transported to supermarkets, wholesalers, and other customers up and down the UK. Fine…
Trucks and trailers are getting bigger. However, despite the views of opponents in this area, this is no bad thing as the main motivator behind the move to larger trucks and trailers is the environmental agenda. Longer trailers mean more payload area which means more cargo per journey and therefore fewer journeys. Longer tractor units mean better aerodynamics and improved fuel efficiency. The good news is that both longer trailers and tractor units are now legal in the UK. However, the bad news is none of this means the maximum permitted gross vehicle weights have increased. Which Longer Tractor Units…
