IRTE Events

A revolution in trailer design

Members and guests attended The Village Hotel in Hull to hear a recent presentation from the Managing Director of SOMI Trailers Ltd, Pauline Dawes MA MBA MIRTE.

Mrs Dawes outlined the basis of the philosophy surrounding the design, which was to find a solution to the problem that most distribution vehicles used by supermarkets run out of load space before reaching the GVW limit.

Whilst studying for her MBA, Mrs Dawes undertook a project to utilise the space on a trailer between the landing legs and the first axle, enabling an extra eight pallets to be loaded within 4m high trailers (34 in total, to give a 31% increase over a conventional trailer). A very clever mechanism to achieve this was developed, which was demonstrated with the aid of computer animations.

During the extensive development programme, 17 Patents have been granted so far for the various mechanisms involved in making it work. Over an eight year period and a lot of research, money and hard work, a fully working unit is now being demonstrated to top supermarkets.

The projected savings in fuel, emissions, maintenance (vehicles and roads) and labour are quite substantial (us-ing 3 journeys instead of 4 to carry the same amount of goods.)

The members and guests of Hull & East Yorkshire Centre would like to thank Mrs Dawes for an excellent and informative lecture and wish her every success for the future.