IN FOCUS / O’PHEE TRAILERS
MODULARISING SUPPORT TRAILERS O’Phee Trailers, part of The Drake Group of Companies, in conjunction with The Freo Group and WGC Cranes, has created a single trailer design to support a range of brands and sizes of crane. MANUFACTURED IN HIGH TENSILE STEEL and therefore light weight, the trailer can be configured as a single trailer, B-double or road train and features a removable cassette cradle system. Mick O’Phee explains the background to the development and how the new design can benefit crane hire businesses. “Today, a crane hire business will have a purpose-built trailer which is specific to the one crane, or the one counterweight system, and they are using heavy flatbed trailers. With this system, you need a supply of trailers which are often left sitting idle for lengths of time. Having assets like trailers under-utilised is major issue for
many crane hire businesses. “In the initial concept stage for these support trailers, we had a couple of large crane businesses, including Freo Group and WGC Cranes, approach us saying they wanted new trailers, but they didn’t want to go down the usual path of purchasing purpose-built trailers that can’t be used for anything else,” said O’Phee. “Up until this development, we have been building a range of counterweight trailers, but they are only specific to each counterweight. It might be for a 10t or 20t counterweight to suit a
200t or 400t crane, but you can only use that trailer for that counterweight. “We worked very closely with Freo and WGC to develop these trailers and we were able to fine tune the concept by being hands on with their operational teams. We proposed to develop a different system to anything currently available on the market. We suggested they have one trailer combination whether that be a B-double, a road train or a single trailer and then design a cassette style cradle system which can house all the different accessories to suit each crane. The trailer has slots in the flanges on both sides for attaching cradles that
The new design had to address issues relating to working at heights and also load restraint.
32 / CAL September 2021
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