we all know how notorious the UK roads are but is the continent the same? the reason i am asking is that we (artic drivers) are blamed due to the trailers wheels tearing up the surface on things like roundabouts plus we are blamed for the tram lines on motorways. i am trying to establish where the problem actually lies ie the trucks or the road. i suspect that it may be more down to cheap materials and poor workmanship rather than trucks and my basis for this conclusion is the fact that you can sit on the inside lane with miles and miles without tram lines. if we were to blame then surely there would be more continuity than that? i need a comparison to back up my theory so its over to the continental drivers to help me
very wide subject here i’m afraid scanny.
france for example has probably the best motorways in europe but every penny spent at the peage goes to the company that maintains the road whereas in the uk your roadtax pays for MP’s fictitious mortgages or cleaning their moats.
spanish roads regularly get resurfaced but they don’t do the important bits underneath so they look nice and shiny when done but after a while they start to get big dips in them like a rollercoaster 
german motorways have a lot of tramlines because you can’t overtake for miles and miles so all the trucks use the same lane
italian motorways are narrow and dangerous but they are well maintained because they are also paid by the users
belgian and dutch motorways are slowly deteriating with tramlines because of the overtaking bans but belgians are worse because they are mostly concrete
If I remember this correctly, road surfaces are designed to develop ruts as they wear.
may well be your reaction .
I seem to remember reading this in a civil engineers trade magazine, many years ago.
(I was bored, in a waiting room somewhere, waiting, with nothing else to read).
The reason they build roads to develop ruts, is that the ruts show the amount of wear. So when the ruts get to a certain depth, that stretch of road is worn out and needs resurfacing.
Of course, resurfacing a road takes money, so they leave it until well after the designed depth of rut, built into the road, is reached. Patching where it’s essential until they can fix it properly.
By then, instead of needing a resurfacing job, the whole depth of road bed is knackered so it has to be dug out and rebuilt, which costs even more and takes much longer.
They may have superseded this method and have to dig out the old style of road bed, to rebuild it the new improved way.
Scanny asked if Europe was the same, well the Yellow Brick Road was not named after the Emerald City by Dorothy & the cowardly lion. OK it was maybe the Diamond City and it was the severely broken road from Antwerp. Many of the roads in the Ruhr are well past their sell by date and even the busy transit roads in France, around Lille and Laon are wearing out fast.
To me things have got much worse since the introduction of air suspension and in particular since the introduction of Super Singles.
I think things have got far worse in the UK since we went to 44 tonnes.
As for mainland Europe, France leads the way in both road and rail transport. Both networks are superb, and new routes are being built all the time.
Harry Monk:
I think things have got far worse in the UK since we went to 44 tonnes.
please elaborate. as i said, we are getting the blame but i need the senior drivers to tell me their observations. as far as i am concerned, it is an unsubstantiated claim. no one has offered anything to back it up which is why i am defending us and looking at other possibilities ie poor quality roads. i need to know the reality though. if trucks are too heavy as observed by those who drive them, i need those people to tell me. i dont know when 44 tonnes was introduced so i am not in a position to compare first hand but i need to win this for us. i cant say where but there is talk of a 13.5 ton limit for the UK within 20 years. we all know how much congestion that would create and how many hauliers would go bust due to staff wages for the fleets of small trucks it would take to move the same amount of goods
I think any talk of a 13.5 tonne limit will actually mean an increase Scanny. I would understand that to mean the driven axle limit being raised to bring us in line with other parts of Europe.
There could be never be a blanket ban on trucks over 13.5tonne gross as an empty petrol tanker would weigh that. A more simple approach would be 40 tonnes on 5 axles
The problem is each country has its own limits and
who is going to try and get through the EU parliament■■?
scanny77:
Harry Monk:
I think things have got far worse in the UK since we went to 44 tonnes.please elaborate. as i said, we are getting the blame but i need the senior drivers to tell me their observations. as far as i am concerned, it is an unsubstantiated claim. no one has offered anything to back it up which is why i am defending us and looking at other possibilities ie poor quality roads. i need to know the reality though. if trucks are too heavy as observed by those who drive them, i need those people to tell me.
Well, obviously trucks which weigh 44 tonnes will wear the road out more quickly than trucks which weigh 38 tonnes.
Sure as God made little green apples, trucks will only ever get bigger.
Harry Monk:
scanny77:
Harry Monk:
I think things have got far worse in the UK since we went to 44 tonnes.please elaborate. as i said, we are getting the blame but i need the senior drivers to tell me their observations. as far as i am concerned, it is an unsubstantiated claim. no one has offered anything to back it up which is why i am defending us and looking at other possibilities ie poor quality roads. i need to know the reality though. if trucks are too heavy as observed by those who drive them, i need those people to tell me.
Well, obviously trucks which weigh 44 tonnes will wear the road out more quickly than trucks which weigh 38 tonnes.
from a physics perspective, not necessarily. it comes down to the pressure focused on any single point, in our case, the tyre. if you look at wreckers, hiabs etc, they carry blocks of wood to put on soft ground under their legs. the reason is to spread the weight over a wider area in order to reduce the focus of the weight on a small point. it is the same weight but because it is spread over a larger area, it doesnt sink as far. the same principles apply to trucks. without doing the specific maths, a 38 tonner on 5 axles will cause more damage than the same weight running on 6 axles because each tyre is carrying less weight with the extra axle. putting more weight on would simply balance a 44 tonner with similiar focal points as a 5 axle 38 tonner.
i suppose a simpler comparison is to compare a motorway in the UK with a motorway in france for example where truck traffic is similiar weight and frequency, calais/dover perhaps? are the roads in similiar condition or is one better than the other?
scanny77:
Well, obviously trucks which weigh 44 tonnes will wear the road out more quickly than trucks which weigh 38 tonnes.
from a physics perspective, not necessarily. it comes down to the pressure focused on any single point, in our case, the tyre. if you look at wreckers, hiabs etc, they carry blocks of wood to put on soft ground under their legs. the reason is to spread the weight over a wider area in order to reduce the focus of the weight on a small point. it is the same weight but because it is spread over a larger area, it doesnt sink as far. the same principles apply to trucks. without doing the specific maths, a 38 tonner on 5 axles will cause more damage than the same weight running on 6 axles because each tyre is carrying less weight with the extra axle. putting more weight on would simply balance a 44 tonner with similiar focal points as a 5 axle 38 tonner.
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It’s the trailers that are the problem. Five extra tonnes on the arse-end, and as we all know, tri-axle trailers don’t steer. Just rip the road up
Lower gross weights= more movements needed = more jobs.
i agree with you when screwing round. there is no dispute that it is the trailer tyres doing the damage. there isnt a great deal we can do about that though. thats down to the planners forcing us to screw the trailers because there isnt enough room for a nice curve
the question remains though. is 44 tons too heavy or are UK roads built with cheap materials?
scanny77:
the question remains though. is 44 tons too heavy or are UK roads built with cheap materials?
That question is what I replied to.
They planners and road builders need to do a rethink as to
drop the weights down ,Will mean a increase in commercial
traffic, more smoke emissions, larger amounts of Fossil fuel
being used, A increase in the length of the Trailers used will
be brought in, when that is not yet known The polish Govt.
are doing trails with a over size trailer at present try reading
this LINK
As Richie is seeking election as president of some transport utopia, we have to go back to basics and reinvent the wheel.
Any 3 year old kid with a dinky toy can demonstrate that a 3 axle trailer will ruffle the tablecloth much more than a parp parp. The only answer is to have self steering / tracking axles. But hang on, you say, they are not new. They have been around for 50 years, at the end of the day it is the 3 year olds mother who dictates what truck and trailer design is best.
Best is cheapest, because it makes her box of chocolate monster cereal cheaper. At the end of the day, the haulier who can carry 26 or 52 pallets of monster cereal for three pence per load less will win the business, whether he does that by using tried and tested methods, like 3 axles fixed longitudinally or opts for readily available equipment that is obsolete before it is out of the paint shop.
Or, we do reinvent the wheel, by offering tax breaks for innovative thinking and reward the UK hauliers who break the jelly mould. Someone like ■■■■ Denby or Stan Robinson have been around for years, they should be able to offer some ideas, oh they did? They were thrown out by the dinosaurs in the big house.
someone made the decision to up the limit to 44 tons and now that we are running at that weight, we are getting the blame for the poor conditions that we have to drive on. there seems to be some injustice there and that is what i am trying to defend us against. 44 tons doesnt make much difference to me personally since i have only been that heavy a few times. although i pull tri axles, i probably never touch as much as 38 tons. but this is not about me, its about defending the industry against an allegation. whose fault is it when you give your kids some crayons and they draw on the wall? i am merely trying to come up with a possible alternative to the reason that the roads are in a poor state and the fact that it is not consistant supports my arguement. otherwise we would have miles and miles of constant tramlines in lane 1 and that is not the case. they tend to be relatively short distances and very infrequent
Go and talk to the Finns or Swedes , Dutch Belgian, Italians doing the white gold,
they will tell you that more is better than less, and no way will they go for lower
weights, The roads have to be better built and maintained, so the Goverment,s should spend more money which is not the case on the upkeep of the roads,
yes pete aren’t the weight limits in scandinavia much bigger than uk? 60 tonnes or something like that?
scanny if there are just short stretches that are tramlined then surely it’s the fault of the road otherwise all roads would be damaged fairly evenly around the country wherever trucks frequent?
scanny77:
someone made the decision to up the limit to 44 tons and now that we are running at that weight, we are getting the blame for the poor conditions that we have to drive on. there seems to be some injustice there and that is what i am trying to defend us against.
To be honest, I’ve been doing this job for 23 years now and I long ago got used to the fact that people don’t like us. People will never like us, whatever weight or length we run at.
And who am I to cast the first stone when even I generally do not like trucks or their drivers? 