VAUGHAN PLANT HAULAGE OFFERS A COMPREHENSIVE RANGE OF TRANSPORT SERVICES THROUGHOUT THE UK AND IRELAND AS WELL AS EUROPE. IT NOW OPERATES FROM ITS NEW PURPOSE-BUILT FACILITY IN DENHAM, UXBRIDGE, JUST OFF THE M40 WITH ROAD LINKS TO ALL MAJOR UK MOTORWAYS AND ALSO INTO THE CENTRE OF LONDON. HEAVYTORQUE TALKS TO THE COMPANY’S FOUNDER AND HEAD, JOHN FLAN VAUGHAN.
Basing a company in the right location in order to benefit from any potential opportunities that might arise is difficult to achieve with almost any type of business, add the shortage of land and huge demand for premises in the Southeast of the country and things become far more complicated. If the company is engaged in specialist heavy transport running a wide range of low loaders and crane equipped vehicles and the chances of finding suitable premises within 50 miles of London becomes doubly difficult.
But if you know where to look and can act quickly there are potential sites, but it needs local knowledge and an ear to the ground in order to find the ideal site in a perfect location just a mile or two from the M25 and virtually within walking distance from the M40/A40, one of the main routes from the West in Central London.
HOWARD COLCOMB, WHO USED TO RUN HEAVY TRACTOR UNITS, IS NOW RETIRED BUT STILL HAS A KEEN INTEREST IN THE HEAVY TRANSPORT WORLD AND HAS CONSTRUCTED A COLLECTION OF SCALE MODELS OF THE TRUCKS HE DROVE. HEAVYTORQUE MET UP WITH HIM AT HIS HOME IN CLEETHORPES, NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE.
Finding a job you really enjoy can be rewarding – it makes going to work an absolute pleasure most of the time and far less of a chore on the not so good days. If you are lucky, the time spent working in a rewarding and satisfying role, will be a defining period of your working life and something to look back on with fondness and a sense of achievement, for the rest of your life, even decades after leaving that job to go to pastures new.
Howard Colcomb, a native of South Wales, but now retired and living in North Lincolnshire, still views the time spent on heavy low loaders in his homeland almost 40 years ago, as some of the best days in his working life. The opportunity to get behind the wheel of a variety of heavy tractor units, which included both a Mack and a Kenworth 6×4, while working for Bridgend-based Tony Morgan, shifting heavy plant and other oversize loads around the UK, made a huge impression on him. So much so that he has built several scale models of the trucks he drove, painted in the green, red and white livery used by the Morgan family for many years.
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EURO AUCTIONS IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST AUCTIONEERS OF HEAVY PLANT, CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT, AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT AND MOTOR VEHICLES. HEAVYTORQUE TALKS TO TREVOR KEYS IN THE COMPANY’S LEEDS AUCTION SITE.
The buying and selling of goods via a public auction is a means of doing business that is almost as old as civilisation itself. The earliest recorded auction dates to about 500BC and through the generations they became the recognised means for buyers and sellers to trade on the open market and establish the real value of goods and other assets. This still holds true until the present day. Any number of calculations, mathematic formulae and computer programs may be employed to establish the value of an object or some other form of property – but the simple principle is that its real value is what the marketplace decides.
The winning bid is what an individual is prepared to pay when the hammer falls, it might be far more than many anticipate, or conversely far less. Modern auction sites such as Euro Auctions, state of the art facilities at numerous locations throughout the world, use all manner of new technology to present items for sale. The growth of the internet as a medium for buyers to bid remotely for goods at a live auction, has completely change the dynamics of the sales process for many throughout the world.
A REMOTE-CONTROL TRAILER HITCHING SOLUTION THAT AUTOMATES THE COUPLING AND UNCOUPLING PROCESS, INCLUDING AIR, ELECTRICS, AND BRAKES.
The technology employed in truck and semi-trailer couplings is pretty well tried and tested. In modern times the standard two-inch kingpin, single oscillating 5th wheel coupling has become the standard for most applications up to 80 tonnes gross combination weight (GCW), with the bigger 3.5-inch version for use at higher weights. Most UK operators favour lighter and cheaper pressed steel couplings for lighter weights, but the heavy-duty cast version is almost universally used for heavier, tougher applications.
Proven 5th wheel technology is pretty much the norm throughout the world, although older readers will remember when there were other options in use – automated couplings from Scammell and others were popular for lighter weight use – particularly where trailers were swapped multiple times per day. Early versions of this system had automatic connection of the electrical connections and operation of the hydraulically actuated, rod-operated braking systems used on vehicles in the immediate post-war years.
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FREELANCE UK IS AN EAST MIDLANDS, INDEPENDENT SPECIALIST HAULIER THAT HAS ITS ROOTS IN MAINLAND EUROPE. HEAVYTORQUE MEETS THE FAMILY ENSURING THAT STANDARDS ARE KEPT HIGH IN MACHINERY TRANSPORT.
Boughton Industrial Estate, located on the outskirts of Ollerton in Nottinghamshire, steeped in history forms the operating base for this haulier. Eight decades ago, it was known to the military as Camp 633 and operated as a German PoW camp; the Imperial War Museum holds surviving footage of the site’s resident Germans relaxing and going to church after the end of the Second World War.
Freelance UK’s owner Chris Porter gives me a tour of the yard and the huts out of which it trades while telling tales of German names found carved into the sheds’ foundations, rumours of munitions lying buried in the earth and ghostly goings on in the dead of night. Chris spent many years overseas running businesses, mainly dealing with plant and machinery, before returning to the UK just over 20 years ago.
LOADES MOVEMENTS IS A FAMILY RUN BUSINESS BASED IN PETERBOROUGH. IT HAS A FLEET OF SHORT TO EXTRA-LONG VEHICLES WITH MOUNTED CRANES WHICH CAN LIFT AND SHIFT ALMOST ANYTHING. HEAVYTORQUE TALKS TO ROY LOADES WHO BEGAN THE COMPANY.
Roy Loades was never a transport man originally. Construction was Loades’ game, although he always had a passion for ‘anything with tracks or wheels on it’, and ran various vehicles along the way. But in 2008 Loades changed direction completely, starting the haulage company Loades Movements with his son Chayne, the explicit aim being to hand his half of the business on.
Loades’ bread and butter is the transport of weighbridges, which is how it came to our attention – anything designed to have an articulated lorry sitting on it must be outside Construction & Use regulations when it’s going down the road, after all. But when this enterprise originally started in 1985, it was in a different arena entirely.
“Our local town, Ramsey, had quite a few small haulage companies in it,” Roy Loades recalls. “I had friends whose families were in transport, so I was always around it.”
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IF YOU NEED TO TRANSPORT A MASSIVE AIRCRAFT, NOT IN THE AIR BUT ON THE ROAD, KWS COOK TRANSPORT IS THE SPECIALIST HEAVY LOAD OPERATOR WHICH CAN DO IT FOR YOU! HEAVYTORQUE FINDS OUT ABOUT THE SPECIAL HEAVY-TRANSPORT EXPERTISE NEEDED TO MOVE OBJECTS THAT RAISE A GREAT MANY CHALLENGES.
Over the years we have featured most aspects of road-going specialist transport, very heavy loads, long, wide and tall cargos, ships, boats, trains, army equipment, all manner of construction equipment and large agricultural machinery have graced the pages of Heavy Torque. But we think this is the first time we have visited a company that, among other things, specialises in moving aircraft. And we don’t just mean smaller private or military planes, it shifts the full-sized affairs, the kind of aircraft most of us climb aboard to head off on our holidays. Dorset-based Steve Cook of KWS Cook Transport, has become the go-to haulier if you are looking to move a C130 Hercules or a Boeing 737 by road. If it’s just a relatively short move, no problem. If you want to take it further, or maybe even into Europe, Cook and his close-knit team have the knowledge and experience to do the job. Obviously, this is not a skill developed overnight. It has taken years to acquire the experience and ability to move something that was designed to fly in the air, rather than be moved by road.
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK WASTE MASTERS GROUP HAS MADE GOOD PROGRESS IN A SHORT SPACE OF TIME. AND, HAVING RECENTLY OBTAINED TWO NEW VOLVO FH 6x4 TRACTOR UNITS, THE BUSINESS HAS NO PLANS TO SLOW DOWN ANY TIME SOON. HEAVYTORQUE FINDS OUT MORE.
While it’s a name that not too many will be familiar with just yet, Waste Masters Group has all the ingredients in place to become a major player in the heavy haulage sector. The business remains very much in its infancy, having been formed in 2017, but things are ticking along nicely and with the experience of owner Ian White paired with the hunger and drive of director Paul Labram, the company is heading firmly in the right direction.
The duo met in the late 90s when Labram’s father started work at Tom White Waste, and young Paul would go along on a Saturday initially to wash trucks. White was the managing director of the business, that his father Thomas had started in 1975, while Labram, 34, worked his way up the ranks from HGV mechanic to operations manager. It was during the latter years at the business that the two friends and colleagues identified an opportunity to move into the plant hire sector – Waste Masters Group was born soon after.
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WITH TRAILERS AND CRANES, REGULATORY EXPERTISE AND A TEAM OF SPECIALIST STAFF, PLANT MOVEMENTS DELIVERS AND REPLACES ROOFTOP PLANT AND EQUIPMENT ACROSS THE UK. HEAVYTORQUE SPOKE TO MANAGING DIRECTOR JOHN MILLER ABOUT THE COMPANY’S DEVELOPMENT FROM A SPIN-OFF OF DUCTWORK SPECIALIST HOTCHKISS TO ITS PRESENT POSITION AS A ONE STOP SHOP FOR PLANT DELIVERY AND INSTALLATION.
The evening before I was due to interview John Miller for this piece, his name flashed up on my mobile screen. He was calling to reschedule the interview; an emergency equipment job had come up that afternoon, and he was going to handle it himself. Rescheduling an interview with a journalist is pretty routine. Calling to make sure they are OK with that, and doing so because you need to get out behind the wheel yourself, is somewhat rarer. It’s a sign of Miller’s careful, hands on, approach.
Less rare, but still remarkable, is the path Miller took to owning and running the company. He’d first worked as a casual labourer with Plant Movements in the late 1980s, alongside a more commercial role as an estate agent. The company was initially part of ductwork specialist Hotchkiss. In the late 1970s, it had been spun off as an independent business. In 2002, Peter Walter and Miller bought out the then owner. Walter, Miller says, had wanted a partner with commercial expertise, as well as practical experience.
