UK– Over 200 exhibitors gathered at this past Road Transport Expo (RTX), which took place from the 28^th-30^th of June at the NAEC Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire, UK. The T&BB team was out in full force to bring you all the latest news from the show.

Tyre Manufacturers

The show attracted all the big guns from the tyre manufacturing industry with Hankook Tire & Technology of Seongnam-si, South Korea, launching its new range of hybrid tyres specifically designed for both regional and long-distance transport. The company displayed a comprehensive range of CV tyres, which included the Hankook SmartFlex AL51 for the steering axle, an all-position tyre, and the SmartFlex DL51 for the drive axle. Because the SmartFlex AL51 and SmartFlex DL51 tyres utilise 3D printing technology, the accurate tread pattern delivers good traction and water drainage under a wide variety of road and weather conditions. Because of this durability, the tyre carries the labels M+S and 3PMSF (snowflake pictogram), highlighting its ability to cope with wintry conditions.

Hankook also took the time to display the LF95 trailer tyre for regional haul applications from Laufenn, Hankook's second-line brand. The new all-season trailer tyre is designed for a wide range of road conditions and offers impressive mileage with a focus on its wide tread and deep tread grooves. Additionally, Hankook showcased two other Laufenn regional haul treads: the LF22 all-position tyre and the LZ22 drive axle tyre.

On its stand, Continental AG of Hanover featured its newly launched Generation 5 Conti Hybrid truck tyre range on the Continental roadshow truck. In order to demonstrate its durability, the roadshow truck has recently started its two-year-long journey, which will see the vehicle attend 35 trade shows and fairs, travelling over 15,000 km across Europe.

Conti Hybrid Generation 5 Tyres

Bandvulc Tyres Ltd, Continental’s UK retread tyre subsidiary, also had a wide selection of retread tyres on the stand, including the new BD5 drive tyre in the Fleetmaster range which has been engineered for mileage performance and longevity. The Wastemaster 5 tyre was also on display, demonstrating its sidewall protection features for urban waste collection vehicles. Finally, the Citymaster 5 tyre for the bus and coach sector was in attendance featuring a reinforced sidewall which adds an extra layer of rubber compound to the outer sidewall for enhanced protection against sidewall scrapes.

Continental stand at RTX

Staying with tyres, but moving to software, Giti Tire Pte Ltd of Singapore debuted the Mercury fleet management system. Built on a cloud-based system, the application, which is available to download on any smart device, gives real-time data sets to drivers, owners and operators monitoring tyre health and allowing all work carried out by Giti Service Partners to be logged and visible to the fleets 24/7. Mercury works in conjunction with Giti Fleet, the tyre manufacturer’s end-to-end complete tyre solutions service designed to optimise operation costs. This includes products, maintenance, quality monitoring, retreading, technical support and 24-hour roadside assistance.

The software has been in development for the last two years and was trialled last September with several UK-based fleet customers. The service will be offered as a value-added service to all truck and bus customers contracted to the brand. The next stage of development is to add an option to purchase new stock through the application.

Moving Trucking into the Digital Age

Moving onto AI, digitalisation and software-as-a-service, Canadian tech firm Geotab Inc, a specialist in transportation telematics systems, launched the beta version of Project G, an AI-powered fleet management software. The software uses a chatbot assistant that enables customers to ask questions through a chat interface about their vehicle fleet in areas including vehicle performance, vehicle usage, fuel economy, cost savings and more. The customer receives immediate, data-driven answers to help improve efficiency and reduce vehicle downtime. Geotab believes this is the future of connected transportation analytics, which is currently being piloted with certain Geotab customers in the UK and Canada. The software will be available through a monthly subscription service and is set to go live at the end of the year.

Geotab Project G

Specialist in electronic warning and safety devices, Brigade Electronics Plc, presented a new road safety product, Radar Predict. In a bid to make the roads safer by reducing on-road collisions, the dual radar system uses a combination of radar technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to detect road objects, other vehicles and other road users, to predict if a collision is likely to happen and if so, it then promptly notifies the driver with an audio and visual alert. Radar Predict can make these detections up to 5 metres from the side of the vehicle, 7 metres in front of the vehicle and up to 30 metres to the rear of the vehicle’s cabin.

Brigade is betting big on the demand created by the Direct Vision Standard (DVS) changes for HGVs (Heavy Goods Vehicles) advocated by Transport for London, with an estimated 165,000 vehicles needing to be updated to meet the new DVS changes. Radar Predict can be fitted on any large vehicle, including rigid and articulated trucks, within 2 hours and meets both DVS proposals and UN Regulation 151 (Blind Spot Detection - 2019).

Tippers / Trailers

Plastics manufacturer, Goliath Mouldings Ltd (aka Goliath Tipper Bodies) of Thame, UK is planning to offer a lightweight tipper body for rigid construction trucks in the UK with contract production in Poland scheduled for September this year. The company has built four generation prototypes to date, the fourth of which was on display on the stand of Swindon-based MAN Truck & Bus UK Ltd on a TGS 32.470 8x4 (49F0148) construction truck chassis with a sleeper cab. The body itself is made up of a U-shaped 20mm thick HDPE body, bolted to an ‘exoskeleton’ steel frame and subframe. A fifth-generation prototype is in development whereby the body will be fixed without bolts as well as having a ridged design for greater strength and further weight reduction.

Schmitz Cargobull (UK) Ltd of Manchester, announced the introduction of multiple new products at RTX; products on display included a rigid tipper (MKO) on a Renault Truck chassis; the first showing of the new freepost curtainsider (S.CS Freepost) semi-trailer launched at the official opening of the Manchester factory in March this year; and the S.CUe – electric Schmitz Cooling Unit system, comprising the SCB-EP85 full electric trailer refrigeration unit, battery pack and fully type approved electric axle generator. The latter is the SCB Generator Axle consisting of an electric motor and single ratio transmission offering an output of 22kW; the axle charges during braking, deacceleration and at speeds exceeding some 37mph. It operates in three modes of operation: SAFE mode – the generator axle is set to keep the battery charged above 80% (a mode suited to pharmaceutical transport operations); Normal mode – the battery never falls below a 50% state of charge; ECO mode – only switches on should the battery likely to drop below 30% charge. The aim of the three modes is to allow the customer to adapt the trailer to specific application scenarios ranging from maximum goods safety (SAFE) to maximum savings (ECO).

Tiger Trailer Ltd of Winsford, Cheshire exhibited two of its more recently introduced trailer products at RTX; a temperature-controlled semi-trailer, the Tiger Siberian range, and a step-framed moving double deck. The Tiger Siberian reefer is built in partnership with one of Spain’s largest and oldest temperature-controlled trailer builders, Lecitrailer SA of Zaragoza. The partnership, which was confirmed in 2020, sees the Spanish company manufacture the Tiger Siberian in its entirety including a fully KTL treated chassis, which is modified and fully compliant with UK type approval regulations. Tiger Trailers has so far focussed on the single temperature trailer segment and is now offering tri-temperature versions of the Tiger Siberian with three compartments for ambient, chilled and frozen products.

The other semi-trailer was a step-frame moving floor double deck, a key feature of which is Tiger Trailer’s own design of direct drive hydraulic four-ram deck lifting system, powered by an electro-hydraulic power pack positioned behind the side guards between the king pin and the first axle. It offers space for 44 pallets.

Specialist builder of truck body equipment, Putzmeister of Aichtal, Germany – a subsidiary of SANY Group of Changsha, Hunan Province, China and distributor for Europe of its electric trucks – announced at RTX that in mid-August it would introduce a right-hand drive (RHD) version of the SANY 8x4 etruck with Putzmeister iONTRON eMixer body. This follows demonstrators of the Sany 8x4 twin steer iONTRON eMixer on demonstration in Germany, Austria, France and Spain and that it had over 15 in operation in Norway and Iceland. He added that he was in discussion with several tipper body companies about cooperating on the development of electric 4 and 3-axle tipper trucks initially in Germany, Netherlands and the UK.

Zany etruck and Putzmeister iONTRON eMixer with Heliox charger at RTX

Other news

In other news, Electra Commercial Vehicles Ltd announced ambitious plans to build a long-haul 40-tonne temperature-controlled drawbar battery electric vehicle as part of the Escalate Project (a pan-European 37-member consortium from 13 countries).

Benjamin Smith, Managing Director at Electra told us that the project began in January 2023 with a GBP 19 million/42-month plan to build a pilot vehicle that demonstrates improved technological capabilities with range, efficiency, and design of components. This will come in the form of a 40-tonne drawbar battery electric vehicle (BEV) capable of achieving 800km on a single charge, which Electra will demonstrate in the UK and Germany in the next four years. The truck will be based on an Electra eStar LEM27-350 chassis, with a drawbar trailer that will include energy-efficient electrically powered refrigerated systems, high-performance insulated box bodies with tail lifts and solar panels to contribute to range maximisation.