Industry Innovation
TRT manufactures innovative load connection device to increase efficiency of Modular Platform Trailers TRT is a New Zealand manufacturer of specialist trailers for the crane and heavy haulage industries. Having sold our first trailer into Australia back in 1992 we learnt that whilst the Australian Road Transport Industry had codes and standards that covered trailer lighting and brakes, at that time it had no standard that load restraints were required to be engineered too.
This duplicates the section of the deck and coaming rail to be tested. We then take it to a test facility and have it pull tested. The structure (load restraint) must retain its structural integrity to a minimum of 1.5 times its given load rating without permanent deformation. Typical load ratings in low loaders is 10,000 kg per deck or coaming rail load restraint.
In NZ, all vehicles over 3.5 tonne are required to have their various tie down (load restraints) points certified by a registered Transport Engineer. They are engineered to NZS 5444:2005, which covers rope rails through to the more complex restraints engineered into the deck of a low loader. For these to be rated correctly, TRT manufacture a weldment section of the trailer (see image Fig 1).
Whilst there was no load restraint standard that was a requirement to get a trailer registered back in 1992, TRT used the NZ standard 5444, for designing and engineering in the load restraint points in all trailers sold into the Australian market.
Fig 1 – Certified load restraint system
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LIFTING MATTERS
JUNE 2019
As Bruce Carden, Manufacturing Director for TRT says, “It’s all very well having a requirement to use rated chain securing the load, but if the points that some chain are secured to are not engineered to the same code as the dogs and chains, then the weak point may well be the attachment at the trailer.” Knowing a load restraint requirement within the trailer may come one day, TRT ensured all trailers sold in Australia from those early days onwards have all been built to a code which gives the operator and company owner piece of mind.
