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Past Issues

March 2005

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While some may regard the use of aluminium in trucking as relatively new, in this article FleetWatch correspondent Jack Webster enlightens us otherwise reliving a bit of aluminium history on the home front. It hasn't 'just arrived' as many would believe. It's been with us for a long time.

Aluminium did not find a home among local truck body builders as early as it did in Europe and the USA. In fact, South African transporters had to wait almost thirty years after the first aluminium tanker was built in Europe to legally transport fuel in aluminium tankers into urban areas. 
 

Aluminium has been used in the manufacture of road vehicles in South Africa since the early 1950's with the first operator to use the material on a large scale being the South African Railways Road Motor Services (RMS). A corrugated aluminium extrusion - numbered P36 - was used for the sides, head and tail boards of goods vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers, supplied by Alcan Aluminium (the Aluminium Company of Canada), through their distributor, Premier Metal, who were also the agents for the American Clarke Van Body.

The Clarke Van Body was virtually all aluminium but when Fruehauf USA were asked if they had a competitive design, they retorted: "No, we do not market and sell aluminium. We use aluminium in our designs but only for low stressed components. For items subject to high stress, particularly high tensile stress, we use high tensile steel."

This philosophy was clearly manifested in a composite design by Fruehauf Trailers and Semi-trailers in which the main load-carrying members, fifth wheel upper rubbing plate, kingpin, etc were high tensile steel and the cross-members, side-raves, deck plates, etc were aluminium.
 

Bulk meal tanker for Impala Mieliemeal         ALUMINIUM extruded sides on railway RMS semi-trailer. The aluminium extrusions were P36 and were used on all RMS bodies over a period of seveeral years in the 1950’s and 1960’s

A typical example of the strategic use of aluminium was illustrated when, in the late 1980's, an "all aluminium" Interlink combination of semi-trailers was exhibited on the Durban Transport Show, with the Certified Weighbridge Certificate of the total tare clearly displayed. It was over 400 kg heavier than the Fruehauf Composite Aluminium /Steel equivalent Interlink Combination.

The major development in the use of aluminium was in the manufacture of bulk tankers, particularly tankers conveying petroleum products such as petrol.

Prior to 1966, the Fire Departments in South Africa - nationwide - prohibited aluminium road tankers carrying petrol to enter metropolitan cities and towns. After a visit to the United States in 1966, local tanker builders discovered the exact opposite was the case in that country where only aluminium tankers were allowed to carry flammable liquids in bulk in the cities and towns.
 

A meeting was convened and attended by well-known Fire Chiefs, Ted Barber of Benoni; John Sutton from Pietermaritzburg; Jack De Beer of Johannesburg and Pat Smith of Durban - and many others. The Americans had chosen aluminium rather than steel for tankers carrying petrol in the USA because it presented far less risk of a fire and explosion in the case of an accident (aluminium does not spark like steel does when dragged at speed across tarmac). The Fire Chiefs were shown an explanatory film after which they revisited their rejection of aluminium tanks and since then, virtually all road tankers carrying petrol are aluminium.

The use of the material has expanded by leaps and bounds since those early days to the point where today, it is widely accepted - and often specified - as the preferred material in many applications where it would not even have been considered before. Aluminium truly has come of age.