The Sarge:
Resurrection time - sorry. Someone asked me today why is a tilt called a tilt? I’ve heard something about old english for the canvas on a boat - anybody??
The answer’s a few posts above your question sarge.
Old word for canvas.
robinhood_1984:
Lol yes, those are the ones. I was never sure if they were intended to be that way or Schenker being cheapskates bought Euroliner shells and threw some old tilt canvases over the top, covering the sliding roof in the process. They seem an odd contraption though and I can only imagine it was that they had to be enough of a tilt to conform to TIR regulations as they use them extensively on the Finland side going in to Russia and it wasn’t that long back that Russia/TIR allowed standard Euroliners from what I recall.
I always thought tilts looked wonderful, but the best looking tilts are always on the back of someone elses truck or in photos!
not only schenker, they are pretty common in eastern europe in companies who occasionally do TIR-countries. beats stripping and rebuilding the frame of a tilt for a roof loading 
I don’t think russia allows for standard euroliners to be sealed, they have to be sealable like a tilt, like in the picture, running the cord through the buckles wont do
I did a week in the uk for an owner driver with an old ERF (eaton box) pulling tilts for Frans Maas in the mid 90’s. (probably some of those trailers that are still in use at DSV as mentioned above).
A very wet and windy week. Switched the wipers on when I got in the truck & they were on just about all week.
Went to load drums of scrap nickel somewhere in the Hamilton, Glasgow area. Pulled the leeward side up and they started loading it. Wind turned round, lifted up the sheet and moved it across about 2 feet. Forkie lifted me up stood on one fork … not even on a pallet 
and I tried to pull it back as best I could. Wrenched my shoulder. It was painful for years. Eventually had a cortisone injection in it & that fixed it. 
'course when I pulled the side back down it was still a foot short for the eyes to go over the loops, so had to interweave the cord until it settled on the road. (You lads that have worked with the tilts will know what I mean).
I’d never worked with tilts before and really struggled in the rain that week. The place in Hamilton only allowed 1 truck in the yard at once, so although others were parked outside waiting, there was no other drivers around to offer some help.
Used to make me laugh, people doing tilts when their own work (usually containers) was quiet, they used to moan like hell about stripping ‘that bloody trailer out, i dont know how you boys do it day in day out’.
When questioned about where they’d been to strip out, turns out all they did was take the sides out for a forklift to unload the sides, they had’nt even touched the roof, let alone taken the bars out and pushed the sheet forward!
I think they would’ve turned round and bought the trailer back to Felixstowe if they had an actual stripout!
I once had the mis-pleasure of stripping this out in Sunny Scunny one cold wet afternoon 
so, a tilt trailer is like the pics above and a euroliner is a curtainsider with a sliding roof? is there always a frame for the curtains or does that dismantle too?
or have I got this a bit wrong?
Kindle that’s a great pic. … and perhaps the better of the 2 in the cold & wet than 40*C bright sunshine?
daffyd:
so, a tilt trailer is like the pics above
yes … well some of them. Not the curtain siders like in Kindle’s 2nd pic of his Scania 143.
and a euroliner is a curtainsider with a sliding roof?
yes
is there always a frame for the curtains
If you mean for the tilt (sheet) yes… or how would it stay up? 
or does that dismantle too?
I’m no expert compared to some of the guys here, but AFAIK it can be stripped to a flat, though its a workshop job to get it that far down.
or have I got this a bit wrong?
seems you’ve just about got it. 
Could someone explain the process of ‘stripping out’ the trailer. It sounds god awful but I am intrigued. Cheers
Driveroneuk:
Kindle that’s a great pic. … and perhaps the better of the 2 in the cold & wet than 40*C bright sunshine?
That pic was taken in the yard where i worked mate, not in Scunny.
MikeDBristol:
Could someone explain the process of ‘stripping out’ the trailer. It sounds god awful but I am intrigued. Cheers
Here’s a pic of my old wagon, as you can see trailer is half stripped and everything else can be pulled apart to turn it into a flat.
Best bit was on a windy day when tilt got lifted up and blown over cab 
Pulled tilts all over europe for years… loved 'em…
Same as FERGIE47 just said. Used to love em, especially the classic old “spread axle”. Having to get underneath every trip to wind the brakes up!! who would do that now? Better still the supercubes with their tiny tyres that used to pop in the heat, we were all told by trailer manufacturers not to exceed 80 ks to preserve the tyres!
The roof and the sides and the back sheet are all one piece, not 4 seperate bits.
First, unlace the back, right up to the top.
Take the TIR cord out nearly all the way to the front, but leaving (usually) it in, in the front metal bay of the trailer.
Then with one of the wooden side boards in the trailer, push the corners of the sheet out of the metal frame of the trailer.
Then stand at the rear of the trailer facing outwards, again with the wooden board, and flick the back sheet up onto the top of the roof.
Then, again with the wooden board, basically you move from one side of the trailer to the other, pushing the sheet on the roof towards the front of the trailer.
After you have done that, you then have to climb up the sides of the trailer standing on the (usually knackered) boards to grab the metal bars, pop the out, and drop them onto the floor.(the bars in the roof in this pic)
Then climb up the sides again, and grab the brackets that the bars sat in(heavy) and pop them out and drop onto the floor.
Sometimes, if the weather is a bit windy, or if you have to drive around on site, its handy to throw a ratchet strap over your sheet and strap it down.
If you are going out on the road you will make a tidier job than this photo, otherwise you wont be seeing a lot in your mirrors.
When you have loaded, you do the reverse to the above.
side load, undo the back lace up to the roof, take the TIR cord out all the way down the side and the front 2 eyelets as well, undo the lace all the way to the roof, put a bit of rope thru the middle eyelet, chuck the rope over the other side of the trailer, pull, pull, and pull some more. When it wont go any further, go back round to the other side, grab a wooden side board, flick the hanging front and back end up onto the roof, take all the wooden side boards out, take the metal upright posts out (not usually easy, as they are heavy) then you are ready for loading!
Here is a side load i did in Portugal
After i put the metalwork back in the roof, i would find the middle 2 eyelets of the back sheet, tie a knot thru that, throw it over the back bar, get down on the ground, and pull the sheet back, which was hard but do-able. Some people would tie a rope around something like a lamp post and drive forward, pulling the sheet back with them as they went.
The thing when getting the sheet back into its usual position is to get the eyelets on the sheets exactly level with the rings on the metal side doors, its easily fixable, but a pain when it doesnt fit flush.
It is bloody hard work on your own!!
The euroliner way is… undo the back doors, loosen the curtains, grab a side board, push the bracket that goes across the back of the trailer (the bit the top of the back doors go into), with the board, push that bar to the front of the trailer until it clicks in a stopper in the rail.
Or if you have a proper metal bar that comes with the trailer, instead of pushing the roof back with a board, get down on the ground, put the hook of your bar thru the metal eyelet on the outside of trailer, and pull the roof to the front.
Total time to do this, under 5 mins, no sweating or climbing up knackered wooden boards.
I enjoyed my time on tilts, but it had more to do with the people I worked with and how the job was run that the trailers. We had a small group of us who did the tilt work, and the rest did general haulage and most of them would run a mile if they were asked to go on tilt work. Meanwhile the 4 of us doing it were having a great time we organised the work between us and got on with it and had laugh doing so, often at my expense as the new boy. 
I remember having to leap for my life doing a side strip on a trailer, I was trying to remove one of the post so we could get a long load out of the side, it took a really big hammer, the reason was because the other 2 post weren’t connected to the trailer as the welds had failed, so when I actually got this post put the entire roof collapsed. I also had a sheet rip from top to bottom, when I was trying to re thread it in a howling wind.
Driveroneuk:
I did a week in the uk for an owner driver with an old ERF (eaton box) pulling tilts for Frans Maas in the mid 90’s. (probably some of those trailers that are still in use at DSV as mentioned above).
A very wet and windy, Pulled the leeward side up and they started loading it. Wind turned round, lifted up the sheet and moved it across about 2 feet. Forkie lifted me up stood on one fork … not even on a pallet'course when I pulled the side back down it was still a foot short for the eyes to go over the loops, so had to interweave the cord until it settled on the road. (You lads that have worked with the tilts will know what I mean).
Yea spend hours trying to lace them back up after the sheet had been caught in the wind, until I learned that they’d sort themselves out after few miles on the road.
And not forgetting the lovely merzario tilts with sides of steel and cross bars that took a forklift to put them back up!
They sound like the blue ones Detrafor had! A side gate fell off one once when i unlaced it, it took two of us to lift it up and put it back in.
The old BVT tilts that Frans Maas acquired had steel tail gate, not only were they heavy, they were a bit out of shape by the time Frans Maas got them so getting them back up and the latch across took all the effort I could muster, after the final drop in a day I’d probably given up and just hoped the sheet would hold it.
kindle530:
Driveroneuk:
Kindle that’s a great pic. … and perhaps the better of the 2 in the cold & wet than 40*C bright sunshine?That pic was taken in the yard where i worked mate, not in Scunny.
Who mentioned sunny Scunny? Come on, it never gets to 40 in Scunny!
It is bloody hard work on your own!!
You can say that again … and I was in my late 30’s then …and have never done a full strip.
I put my old man in hospital stripping out a tilt
I was loading in a little town up in the hills in Italy, Levico to be precise. It was a load of machinery through the roof, fortunately it was a straight frame, not a step frame, so with two of us it was fairly easy getting the sheet up to the front.
The difficult bit was getting the rear cant rail out, it dropped into sockets on the uprights, but someone had wedged a too big tilt board into the sockets below it, causing the uprights to lock the rail into place, I tried beating it, but it wouldn’t budge, the board wouldn’t come out as the rail was too close to push it up, so my next plan was to push the board in the middle and spring it out.
My Dad was stood at the back if the trailer watching me, so I told him to GTFO of the way, so he went over to the side of the factory (we were inside) and I let it have it, the board sprung out and flew across the factory hitting the old man right on top of his canister! There was blood everywhere and we ended up at a hospital where he had a few stitches.
The stitches came after a liberal dosing of alcohol and a razor, which didn’t please the old man one bit.
He was not much happier on the drive home either, moaning about his headache and that he couldn’t sleep, so being the kind hearted soul I am, I jumped in the bunk and said if you can’t sleep, you might as well drive, wake me up when we get to Calais
