Richard Healey Removals Ltd of Beith, a family-run business since 1965, has been experiencing booming business, leading to demand for a new, fuel efficient vehicle. The result? A state-of-the-art body that meets all the requirements of its removals business.
In 2011, Richard Healey, Director, approached the company’s long-standing supplier (Tekbo) with a proposal to build a five-pallet furniture body on a new DAF CF65 with the aim to maximise payload and fuel efficiency by minimising aerodynamic resistance through shaping bodywork and lightweight construction.
The typical manufacturing process of a furniture box body involves attaching internal upright spines to a GRP flat sheet or GRP plywood panel. Richard Healey says that this process has a payload weight disadvantage, and inherent problems with cracking and spines loosening over the vehicle’s life were all too common, so he required a new approach to developing a combi-panel design.
The design was taken to one of Europe’s leading panel manufacturers and the teams developed a completely new process which resulted in a ‘New Super Strength’ lightweight panel, with shaped stiffeners coated on both sides with glass fibre reinforced polyester resin.
The finished vehicle was built and has achieved a payload of 10,800kg which is a 15-20% improvement on previous designs.The vehicle has some unique features and benefits, including the bespoke New Super Strength panels, a curved roof line at the rear of the bodywork designed to angle air flow, radius cant rails, side container doors with internal seals, and a multi-attachment ramp for positioning at any point on side entry.
“All of this contributed to a successful truck build which produced a completely new concept in body building,” Richard Healey tells R&S. The truck has appeared at two of the Truckfest venues so far, and has come home with new trophies for the company cabinet. The truck won 3rd Place Best Kept Rigid and 3rd Place Best Working Rigid Truck at Truckfest Scotland, and 2nd Place Best Kept New Truck at Truckfest Ireland in August.
Richard Healey is so pleased with the new truck and design that he has now placed an order for yet another new truck.