With nearly three decades of experience in wharf cartage, Vantrans Container Transport specialises in bulk movement of empty shipping containers between the Port of Melbourne and container depots in Melbourne’s west. The Footscray-based company has signed on some new clients this year and to help support this growth and improve efficiency, Vantrans recently purchased three double-configuration Freighter Super-B skeletal combinations from MaxiTRANS.
“It’s a low-margin business and most of the time we work on very tight deadlines, which means efficiency is key,” Vantrans founder Jeremy van Hoff says. “Most days, we have over 60 vehicles moving between the port and the depots, therefore we wanted to maximise our vehicle productivity.”
Vantrans is now able to move twice as many containers in one trip. The new 30m skeletal trailers are PBS-approved and designed to meet custom specification, with each new Super-B configuration trailer capable of carrying two 40-foot, or four 20-foot containers. The design of the lead skel, in regards to the position of the suspension & fifth wheel, was imperative to enable the 30m B-double to turn like a 26m combination.
This allows the operator to manoeuvre the vehicle with ease, accessing any Victorian road within the PBS 2B cubic network. One of the main reasons these trailers were built in this design is to have them meet the swept path as a normal B-double even though they are 4-metres longer overall. By achieving this tight turning path the trailers do not need to apply separately for individual routes, which saves a lot of time and money.
“Our research showed that MaxiTRANS not only has the expertise to manufacture custom-tailored solutions for transport businesses, but they are miles ahead of their competitors in terms of delivering PBS-compliant trailers,” Jeremy says. “MaxiTRANS gave us the confidence that we could rely on them to get quality products made to our specifications.”
Jeremy added that although the process of obtaining PBS approval can be complex, the background knowledge shared by MaxiTRANS helped ease this lengthy process for us.
