Swap bodies revolutionise road transport on Windhoek route

AN UNUSUAL sight in SA is Transworld Cargo's special demountable road rigs, hauling container cargoes on regular runs from Johannesburg and Cape Town to Windhoek.
The idea of using these customised road units, according to Gordon Jay, Transworld m.d. in Gauteng, came from his Windhoek partner's overseas experience of the acceptance of the swap-body concept (a particularly well-accepted mode in Germany, for example).
These SA designs, Jay added, are based on the company's Interlink trailer units - offering capacity for a 12-metre and 6-m container, or (less favoured as a loading) three 6-m boxes.
These trailers ride on air suspension, Jay told FTW. Linking a special valve unit into this hydraulic system allows us to lift a loaded trailer by about three inches; drop the legs of the box; then drop the trailer by about six inches. At this stage, we can haul the trailer unit out from underneath the box - leaving it standing on its own four legs.
Better capacity usage of trailer time - cutting out those costly waits for container destuffing - and flexibility in the company's product, are the two main wins for Transworld in the swap body mode.
This makes us very flexible, said Jay. We can swap and chop and change between dry cargoes and perishables - even take the box off, and use the unit as a flat deck. There's not much the market can demand that we can't supply.
Transworld now has four of these specialised units on the road, supplying Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday hauls between Johannesburg and Windhoek; and Thursday and Friday runs out of Cape Town to the Namibian capital.