
Andover Trailers has supplied FM Conway with a specially-designed centre-balanced drawbar trailer for use on its road construction and maintenance operations.
The manufacturer developed the unique trailer to speed up the transport of FM Conway’s range of asphalt chip spreaders - built by Tex Engineering - to sites across London and the south east. The chip spreaders are vital to FM Conway’s highway surfacing and maintenance operations.
The spreaders currently come with their own purpose-built trailers which, due to a lack of powered braking, cannot be used on EU roads. In an inefficient and costly process, FM Conway had previously loaded and secured each chip spreader, including its trailer, on the back of a step frame for transport to site.
Andover Trailers’ design team developed a road-legal, 9-tonne tandem-axle drawbar trailer capable of carrying either of the two chip spreader variants. It is equipped with Gigant axles on steel-spring suspension and runs on 235/75 R17.5 tyres.
It features a full air braking system, LED lighting and aluminium loading ramps that allow loading and unloading from either side.The new trailer means two sizes of chip spreader can be towed to site using the company’s Volvo FE320 4x2 rigid.
John Tobin, asset manager at FM Conway, said the improvement in efficiency means significant cost savings for FM Conway and its customers. “Moving our chip spreaders in the past has always been an arduous procedure that took up time, money and manpower”, he said.
“We’ve worked with Andover for the past 27 years so we knew if we sent them the machine specs and challenged them to devise a more efficient means of transfer we wouldn’t be disappointed. As expected, they produced the goods and we now have a safe, fast way of transporting the spreaders to site, helping us to continue delivering great projects for our clients.”
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