Vrachtwagen met wipkar. That’s Double Dutch for a straight truck with a close-coupled center axle trailer, a widely used combination vehicle in the Netherlands for transporting flowers and potted plants. The Veenplant company sent two of such big rigs to the show I recently visited.
For those who are into kickboxing, you may have recognized Rico Verhoeven on the side of the cab. And for those who are not, the man on the side of the cab is kickboxer Rico Verhoeven. Commonly, he’s the last man standing.
The Scania truck, with the high-end S cab, follows the same 6×2*4 drivetrain recipe as this plant-hauling vrachtwagen, yet it’s powered by a 16.4 liter V8 instead of a 9.3 liter inline-five. For a much harder punch, to stay on topic.
The truck body and the complete trailer were built by EBO van Weel. And both the truck and the trailer are equipped with a Dhollandia slider type of liftgate.
Evidently, the tandem axle trailer has front cargo doors. Open all doors the combination has, lower the ramp -basically a bridge- between the trailer and the truck and the whole loading and unloading process of the entire rig can take place in one go, without de- and recoupling the trailer.
The combo is rated at a gross combined vehicle weight of 45 metric tons (99,200 lbs), that’s rumbling in the heavyweight class for sure.
Backing up a center axle trailer is easier than reversing a full trailer, as there is only one steering pivot point, it’s directly behind the truck’s rearmost axle (whereas a full trailer has two steering pivot points).
An older co-worker of the Scania was also present. The exact same configuration, a bit more introvert, yet still standing out from the crowd. A 2015 DAF XF 510 FAN with a 2006 Floor center axle trailer. FAN is DAF-language for a straight truck with a 6×2*4 drivetrain, here’s another one.
BIGtruck online magazine, also the organizer of the show, posted a video of Veenplant’s new Scania on YouTube. Twisting, turning and round the roundabouts it goes. Or is “shuffling” more appropriate?
Beautiful truck, obviously a point of pride. Making such a beast tame enough to handle narrow, crowded streets is quite the feat.
Leaves of three,
let them be…
The challenges -maneuvering wise- are driving on the often narrow and bendy back roads that lead to the greenhouses and reversing the vehicles into the growers’ yards.
Auctions, wholesalers and many big floriculturists (referring to their business) have large yards with docks, as seen in the video. No problems there.
Such rigs never drive in town or city centers. There’s litterally no business for them there, not for loading, not for unloading.
I miss real farmer’s markets like in the Netherlands. One would believe that in the US Midwest, we’d have similar markets – but alas – we definately do not. There is a lot of commitment to freshness in the Netherlands, due to its size, climate and history. There is a lack of that in most of the US for the same reasons. Sad how the Nederland Boeren are being driven crazy by the EU. It is as though the EU is determined to crush them. Too much freedom!
The trailer looks similar to what we’d call a pup trailer in the US, though rarely seen here with such a high cube enclosed body. And I’m lucky to live in a county with 3 to 5 farmer’s markets a week, depending on season. Some of them are quite large, several acres of vendors, some crafts and prepared food, but lots of vegetables, fruits, nuts, poultry and pork, and seafood (we’re on the coast). Some vendors drive hundreds of miles; vehicles are typically pickups, full size vans, the occasional box truck and/or trailer. Most are older … maybe I should do a post on vehicles of our farmer’s market. Definitely no Scania’s!
The official (registered) name for this type of trailers, regardless the body, is “middenasaanhangwagen”. That’s a trailer with the axle(s) in or near the middle. “Wipkar” is merely jargon, translated seesaw-carriage…
Agreed that these are called pup trailers in the US.
The Scania combination is a frequent UK visitor, bringing plants to the other side of the North Sea. You will never see such big rigs here at farmer’s markets either. The flower and plant retailers/vendors typically use much smaller 4×2 box trucks.
At least here in California, the pup trailers often have a long drawbar and dump bodies for bulk dirt/gravel. The long drawbar allows the driver to dump the trailer load at a work site, then pull forward and reverse with the wheels turned, jackknifing the trailer. Then he can dump the truck bed over the drawbar, without disconnecting the trailer. I’ve seen these guys do this very fast, much faster than disconnecting and manipulating transfer dumps, which may compensate for the smaller capacity of the pup trailer.
https://youtu.be/mU5L_2TMjKc
Thanks, that was interesting and fun to watch! Puppy indeed!
Trailers of any type (semi-trailers excluded) in earth-moving are non-existent here, as the 50 tons national weight limit is doable with a straight dump truck with 5 axles.
Center axle trailers in NL date back to the early eighties, for a long time they were only used in the so-called high-volume transport. See some solutions below to make the distance between the truck and the trailer as short as possible.
Only the center axle trailer (on the left) survived, the rest has become irrelevant because of the changes in length regulations. That was also the end for the so called top sleeper on the roof of an ultra-short day cab.
Watching the BIGtruck video definitely helps to explain the maneuverability advantages of this center-axle trailer design. It’s very interesting… I’ve never seen that before. And those front cargo doors on the rear trailer is an ingenious setup.
An advantage of this set-up is that the truck can also be used to form a 25.25 m long ecocombi. Instead of a center axle trailer, the truck then tows a jeep dolly with a semi-trailer coupled to the dolly’s fifth wheel coupling.
Or course, you can also decouple everything when there’s only a truckload to transport.
Interesting configuration there a few trailers here similar to that but they become the 3rd section of A trains,
Ive never found a full trailer all that difficult to back its just practice and knowing what to watch for, the hard right angle turn in reverse into our tanker wash bay can be challenging depending on which bay is vacant, but getting it wrong is part of the job, everyone does occasionally.Because its always lightly loaded that plant trailer would be ok to back but heavily laden it would be just awful.
The trailer behind the Scania is rated at 18 metric tons GVW (2 x 9 tons axles), the DAF tows a 16 tons trailer (2 x 8 tons axles).
I wouldn’t think flowers would be that heavy, are these trucks really loaded that heavy or is this just what you have to run for the cubic volume ?
It all depends on the type of flowers or plants. Potted plants come with potting soil, for example, so more weight.
A heavy-duty version of a flower trolley is rated at 450 kg (around 1,000 lbs) carrying capacity. The trolley itself is around 40 to 50 kg.
A 6×2 straight truck can transport 26 of such standard sized trolleys, so I’ve read.
Note that 45 tons is the Dutch number (simply the sum of the registered axle loads), 40 tons when it travels to the UK (which is its main job).
Way back, end 80’s, I worked for a flower transporter a few months. Netherlands-England twice a week, leave home at monday morning, back wednesday night, up again Thursday and back Saturday night. Not what I liked, so the adventure ended soon, but “my” truck at the time was a beautiful purple Mercedes with the same set-up as this one, but only 410 hp. Which was a lot back then btw.