Old Top Gear 1992 - Double Decker Trailers

Chris Goffey looks at a new design of trailers for lorries. Taken from season 15, episode 5.

[@silverliteway]

I believe both William and Chris had hgv licences - funny how we heard more about trucks and lorries back then...now it is Matt Watson on a runway ;)

[@hairman943]

Fred wilson has my family and he wont let them go until he has EVERYTHING

[@TTE441]

- funny how almost 30 years later not a lot had changed

[@OffGridInvestor]

here in australia we now use double decker ones and the ones with the tank down lower (they call them camelbacks here I think). the REAL THING I noticed with this was how all the employees liked the status quo because it meant more money for them. And they didn't want things to be more efficient. Explains EXACTLY the mentality of british workers in the 1970s and the collapse of their car industry and the economic stagnation pre-Thatcher.

[@gregorysmith7308]

Seems only the extreme long haul countries have taken this innovation on.

[@PeaveyPV20]

These cant have taken off, never see them now on roads

[@subjectdelta4813]

Double deckers are everywhere, used by most companies. The company I drive for, most of the fleet are deckers. Common as hell.

[@Lukeno52]

You forget just how heavy truck chassis and truck engines are - a few extra wheels on the trailer and the load is spread more evenly on that as well, negating this effect.

[@almostanengineer]

I rarely see single deck trailers these days, even my chilled ones are all double decked.

[@OffGridInvestor]

the REAL THING I noticed with this was how all the employees liked the status quo because it meant more money for them. And they didn't want things to be more efficient. Explains EXACTLY the mentality of british workers in the 1970s and the collapse of their car industry and the economic stagnation pre-Thatcher. WOULDN'T HAPPEN in the USA or Australia. In fact we have the double decker ones here for all the overnight inter-city parcel deliveries/couriers and we have the ones with the tank in the bottom (we call them camelbacks). A lot of what I see at work is traditional flat trailers but that's because we DO have huge weights involved. I don't load trucks with a 4.5 tonne forklift because our product is light. Often we also go fairly high too.

[@gregorysmith7308]

But has this innovation come to pass years later? No. Must be another reason, maybe weight limits introduced to prevent it....

[@alexcheetah79]

all the weight is on the rear axle and when load there is less weight on the front axle, so how would that work.

[@OffGridInvestor]

you know how many trucks I've loaded where the driver wants me to put the heaviest thing over the trailer axles? The original way I was taught when I was a truck driver (basic tray truck, no trailer) in 2010 is that you want the heavier stuff at the front so that when you brake the heavier stuff doesn't push against and crush the front stuff. When doing flour bags we used to put the tallest at the front and work down to the shortest.

[@popuptoaster]

They do that for their own protection against the ministry, might be safer in a crash to have the heavy stuff at the front but it's also much easier to overload the truck axles which costs the driver a LOT of cash if they get stop checked. I deliver steel stock on a flatbed rigid and I much pefer to have stuff pushed up against the thick steel headboard behind the cab but we have a weighbridge at work so i can check the load before I leave the yard in the mornings, sometimes moving one item a metre either way can be the difference between legal and an over weight axle. Technically you are supposed to put the load where you need and it and then if there is a gap fill it with something that will stop the load sliding forwards but as I often carry 14m beams up over the cab roof and hanging off the back of the truck I can change the balance by moving thos back and forth, of course there are front and rear overhang limits to stay within as well....

[@eyeballseesaws]

Waaay! Northern Ireland!

[@leenevin8451]

i thought these were a 2019 thing

[@The101Point1]

wouldn't a double decker trailer be too tall 90s lack of logic

[@karlosbricks2413]

Do you really think companies like B&Q and Parcel Force would trail trailers that were too tall? 2010s lack of logic...

[@OffGridInvestor]

it's the exact same height. Don't think you've been around trucks much. I've beoth driven them and now load them. The average pallet height is about 7 foot, sometimes 6 foot. And sometimes you have a small order and get a pallet that's only 2 foot tall. You can EASILY make it double decker. In fact they now have the double decker curtainsiders shown here as STANDARD for overnight high volume intercity couriers here. And the one with the tank down low and the cargo on the top? they are quite common here and we have a name for them: camelbacks. I think it might be the name of the manufacturer of them here. On top of that, in parts of this country we will tow 4 full length trailers in a row. That's what they use to supply the outback. An area probably bigger than Iran with only 200,000 people.