BI HALDER HAS EXPANDED DRAMATICALLY IN RECENT YEARS, NOT LEAST THANKS TO ITS WILLINGNESS TO MAKE UNIT LOADS OUT OF BULK GRAIN DELIVERIES.
The small town of Driffield in East Yorkshire is equidistant from the rolling arable farms of the Vale of York and Yorkshire Wolds and the grain terminals of the Port of Hull. It’s not surprising, then, that grain is what formed BI Halder’s roots, and made up the majority of what it has been doing ever since. Today, however, the business has gone far beyond its local beginnings, both geographically and in the services it provides. The business is named after one of its founders, Brent Halder, who along with his wife Ann started out doing local work with one wagon in 1969. Things remained that way for the next 10 years, before the purchase of a second truck in 1979 acted as a springboard to expansion, which included storage facilities being added in 1981.
Another 30-odd years on, Halder was up to 16 vehicles plus the storage business. By this time, the next generation was running things, and in 2015 Paul and Louise Halder took ownership of the company in a management buyout. Since then, with the help of their sons Dan and James, they’ve taken things forward dramatically.
BULK HAULAGE VEHICLES SOMETIMES GET BOGGED DOWN AND FREQUENTLY DO NOT FEATURE A HEAVY-DUTY ENOUGH TOWING POINT TO BE RESCUED WITHOUT CREATING FURTHER DAMAGE. BUT RYDAM UNIVERSAL'S HEAVY-DUTY TOWING BRACKETS COULD SOLVE THIS PROBLEM.
Many bulk haulage operators have to venture off-road at times, where they can easily lose traction and get stuck. When they do, a large farm tractor or sizeable piece of construction equipment is often summoned to pull them back out, and as long as the truck isn’t bogged down to its axles and care is applied, it should come out with a relatively gentle pull. But if it has sunk deeply and is still loaded, it will take much more than that to get it free.
Ideally, winching is best: the force is applied gradually and if done properly, there is time to stop and assess the situation before any serious damage can be done. Towing, by contrast, invariably means a series of snatches in which the chain or wire rope is tightened suddenly, putting a tremendous shock load through the towing point – particularly if the towing vehicle is heavy with an abundance of power and traction.
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HAZELL & JEFFERIES OFFERS VARIOUS SERVICES TO CUSTOMERS ACROSS THE COUNTRY, BUT ONE OF ITS MOST POPULAR – AND ONE THAT DRIVERS WILL CERTAINLY BE GRATEFUL FOR – IS ROAD SURFACE DRESSING WORK.
Much has been written over recent years about the state of the roads in this country. It is estimated that there are more than a million potholes on the nation’s roads. But there are businesses out there trying to address the problem, like Oxfordshire-based Hazell & Jefferies. If you see one of its smartly turned-out yellow and blue trucks on the road in spring or summer, it is likely that it will be helping to maintain and improve our road system.
Surface dressing is an increasingly popular way of combatting the poor state of our roads, swiftly restoring damaged ones to prime condition and preventing further damage while ensuring they are waterproof. “Surface dressing gives a road another 5-10 years of life for a fraction of the cost of conventional resurfacing with tarmac,” states Richard Weston, sales and transport manager at Hazell & Jefferies.
FORCE ONE IS A LEADING PRESENCE IN THE SUCTION EXCAVATION MARKET AND HAS AN IMPRESSIVE FLEET OF TRUCKS TO SUPPORT ITS ACTIVITIES.
Force One, based in March, Cambridgeshire, is a market leader in suction excavation. Formed in 2004, it bought its first suction excavation truck in 2007, one of the first such vehicles to appear in the UK. But it did so without having any work for it at the time; it was a speculative buy to see if it could create a market. And it did just that. The company, which was family-owned back then, was started by Patrick Burke and his wife Marnie. Sean Strohman was soon brought in as business development manager, and the company grew and grew – so much so that it was acquired by ReadyPower in 2023.
Declan Burke, Force One’s current MD, tells us: “The company still holds the same core values it had before the takeover. We were all delighted to be joining the ReadyPower Group to drive the business forward to new and greater heights.”
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BELGIAN TRAILER MAKER STAS KNOWS HOW TO BUILD HIGH QUALITY TIPPER AND MOVING-FLOOR TRAILERS. WE MEET THE TEAM AT ITS UK SALES AND SERVICE SUBSIDIARY TO SEE JUST WHAT MAKES THEM SO GOOD.
Belgian manufacturer of tipping and moving-floor trailers STAS is known for its range of advanced designs combining low tare weight, ease of operation and a long service life. Sold in 20 countries via a network of 40 dealers, its trailers have been an important part of the UK transport scene for nearly three decades.
The privately owned company is now under the control of the fourth generation of the Heyse family to be involved in trailer manufacture. It all began when Jan Heyse started as a blacksmith in 1899 in the west Flanders village of Aarsele. In 1934, his sons Urbain and Leon, who worked with him, moved to the nearby village of Stasegem and started producing trailers, initially for the agricultural market and subsequently for road transport operators. They took the name STAS from the village. In the 1960s, the next generation, in the form of Willy Heyse and his wife Lydia, took over and in 1974 the firm was moved to Waregem to secure more space, where the company’s head office remains today.
INCORPORATED AS A BULK TRANSPORT OPERATOR IN 2023, VOLTLOADER HAS ONE VERY SPECIAL USP: IT USES FULLY ELECTRIC HGVS TO UNDERTAKE ALL OF ITS REGIONAL TRANSPORT AND ALSO GIVES CUSTOMERS ACCESS TO ITS BATTERY CHARGING CAPABILITIES. WE MEET THE BRIGHT SPARKS BEHIND THE OPERATION.
The pioneering electric transport service Voltloader is hidden away deep on an industrial estate in the Cambridgeshire market town of Whittlesey. After a couple of false starts, we find the company’s genial founder Dave Rose and head of haulage Bertie Steggles sitting in their office and discover that relying on the geocode system What3Words to find the site would have been appropriate in more ways than one, as its specific mapping location is ‘Fight.Customers.Fumes’.
“All our trucks are electric trucks,” explains Bertie after we sit down with coffee and biscuits. “The difference with us is we are the only ones doing it in bulk haulage. We are the ones pushing it the hardest. Others might use electric vehicles for 10-20-mile shunts, but we are regularly running ours over 250 miles a day.”
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WE RUN THE RULER OVER FLOUR MILLER WHITWORTH BROS' IMPRESSIVE FLEET AND FINDS OUT MORE ABOUT THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE COMPANY'S BULK AND BAGGED PRODUCT OPERATION.
One of the biggest flour millers in Europe, Wellingborough, Northants-based Whitworth Bros relies on its distinctively-liveried in-house fleet to transport its extensive range of bulk and bagged products. “We have in excess of 100 tractor units, a dozen rigids and c130 tanker semi trailers and curtainsided semi-trailers,” says group head of distribution Albis DeRosa.
All 6x2s and operating for the most part at 44 tonnes GVW, the tractor unit line-up includes Scania R460s, DAF XF 530s and XG 530s, and MAN TGX 24.510s. They are all fitted with fridges and some with microwaves, with an eye to maximising driver comfort.
The rigids, meanwhile, are a mixture of Scanias and DAFs, with the line-up from the latter including CFs, XFs and the new XD. “We’re impressed with the XD,” he comments.
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