Tiger Trailers has helped Senator, a Lancashire-based furniture manufacturer, to expand its commercial vehicle fleet. The new range of trailers and demount bodies will help improve operational efficiency and combat the challenging access restrictions the company faces for some inner city deliveries.
As part of the purchase, two 26-tonne DAF rigids with custom demount bodywork and four 13.6-metre tri-axle box vans were supplied. The new box vans will operate on trunking routes across the UK, while the drawbar and demount combinations will join Senator’s existing fleet of similar vehicles, each employed to effectively double the efficiency of its inner-city deliveries by halving the number of journeys required from its Lancashire depot.
“The demount units are the most effective way of transporting furniture orders from our main depot into large cities as we can quickly swap the body and often make two separate delivery runs with the same truck. It’s a solution that really works in our favour,” said James Stokes, Head of Logistics at Senator. “Our business lends itself to this demount body approach and Tiger really stepped up to the mark to ensure that these new additions, alongside the larger trailers, were ideally suited to our needs.”
Each demount body was designed by Tiger using a hot-dip galvanised steel subframe, with four heavy-duty beams and two retracting location cones, each with ISO twist locks. To suit Senator’s existing demount bodies, the rear LED light units were custom-made. In addition, each body features four extremely robust and durable swing-down legs, making them ideal for Senator’s intense quick-change delivery approach.
The two drawbar trailers have a straight-frame chassis design, with a single tow beam. They each feature a raise and lower valve for the suspension, with the valve situated on an extended bracket between the axle wings for ease of use.
The new trucks and trailers will be on the road every day of the week and are expected to travel at least 50,000 miles a year, with Senator expecting to keep the trailers on its fleet for up to 20 years, while it will look to replace the trucks after 10.
