Transcor has overland sector covered

Giant of fleet carries 97-tons on its trailer ALAN PEAT A COMPLEX part of every massive project cargo’s global travels is the inland road section - where giant cargo units need equally gigantic and highly specialised road equipment and perfect route management to see them safely on their way. To meet these needs in southern Africa, abnormal load transporters Transcor have a fleet of 37 truck tractors and 41 trailer combinations - ranging from units with a 10-15-ton payload to the giant of the fleet, which carries 97-tons on its mighty low bed trailer. That’s a truck/trailer combination as long as a cricket pitch and 4.6-metres wide, with an empty weight of 44-tons and pulled by a 550-horsepower Volvo FH16 truck tractor - and needing 58 wheels to roll it along the road. “When someone is developing a big mine, or putting a plant on a site, or moving a factory overseas, we have the heavy haulage equipment and expertise in moving the abnormal sections to where they need to go,” said operations director, Graham Leith. One of the recent big projects was a contract with ZA Trans to move an ammonium and urea plant from Modderfontein to the departure harbour - with the plant on its way to a new home in China. This ranged from 157-ton units, to high volume pieces of equipment as much as 6-m wide by 5-m high - and also included all the breakbulk and containerised cargo. Transcor has also just finished a lot of work for the German heavy material handling specialists Krupp, transporting two ship-loader tripper cars from Vanderbijlpark to its Saldanha Bay site. It’s been a market that has continued to grow, according to Leith, especially in the last two-to-three years. The mining industry, for example, took off over that period, with the low rand value against the US dollar being very good for the export of materials from the SA mines. “But the strengthening of the rand,” said Leith, “is a bugbear, and we can now expect to go through a period of consolidation - with a number of proposed projects being put on ice whilst the investors wait and see which way the rand is going.”