Collett & Sons (Collett Transport) is a Limited company specialising in heavy transport, heavy lift, marine and transport consulting services.
Established in Halifax in 1928 by Richard Collett, the company began as a dairy farming business. [1] When taking his own milk to the dairy by horse and cart, other local farmers asked Richard to take theirs too, which was the beginning of R. Collett Transport.
In 1933 the Milk Marketing Board (MMB) was established to market milk. This resulted in the Board paying for the collection of milk from farms, and on the back of this Richard purchased his first commercial vehicle. The end of the Second World War in 1945 released ex-army vehicles, chiefly Bedfords and Thorneycrofts to the commercial market, expanding the Collett fleet and the milk collection business.
With the introduction of tankers in 1970, the need for milk churns declined and the Collett fleet of vehicles reduced from 14 to five. The milk haulage side of the business was abandoned in 1974 giving way to the formation of R. Collett & Sons Transport (Ltd). With Richard (2) now at the helm, his five sons joined the business to fill various roles, and the focus of the company was shifted from general to heavy haulage and abnormal loads.
Collett features a fleet of 68 tractor units and various trailer combinations with a total carrying capacity of 11,537 Tonnes. The company features 40th in the ICT Transport 50, [2] a ranking of the world's largest specialised transport companies.
Collett & Sons Ltd become the first company in the UK to welcome a Scheuerle BladeLifter trailer, specifically for transporting wind turbine blades.
Having operated from sites in Keighley and Bradford, Collett moved premises to Halifax in 1996, this has since been the company's head office.
In 2014 Collett purchased Europe's largest capacity girder bridge. [3] Manufactured by Scheuerle and TII Group, the 550 Tonne capacity girder bridge is designed specifically for the transportation of power transformers.
BS7121 Part 4 compliant front and rear mounted cranes with lifting capacities ranging from 9 Tonne/Meter to 205 Tonne/Metre. The 205 Tonne capacity is provided by a 8x4 Mercedes 4155 tractor unit complete with an Effer 2055 crane vehicle with 6 boom extensions providing a maximum reach and lift capacity of 30,000 kg at 4.51m and 8,550 kg at 15.25m.
Platform vehicles with hydrostatic driven axles and programmable steering options for multiple steering geometry patterns.
Code of Practice pilot cars for abnormal load escorting.
Holmatro multi-functional synchronous hydraulic heavy lift system, monitoring the position of loads between the four jacks to within a 1mm tolerance, for raising and sliding components up to 500 Tonnes.
A semi-trailer truck, is the combination of a tractor unit and one or more semi-trailers to carry freight. A semi-trailer attaches to the tractor with a type of hitch called a fifth wheel.
Scammell Lorries Limited was a British manufacturer of trucks, particularly specialist and military off-highway vehicles, between 1921 and 1988. From 1955 Scammell was part of Leyland Motors.
A tractor unit, also known as a truck unit, lorry unit, power unit, prime mover, ten-wheeler, semi-tractor, semi-truck, semi-lorry, tractor cab, truck cab, lorry cab, big rig tractor, big rig truck or big rig lorry or simply a tractor, truck, lorry, semi, big rig or rig, is a characteristically heavy-duty towing engine that provides motive power for hauling a towed or trailered load. These fall into two categories: heavy- and medium-duty military and commercial rear-wheel-drive semi-tractors used for hauling semi-trailers, and very heavy-duty typically off-road-capable, often 6×6, military and commercial tractor units, including ballast tractors.
Muir Hill (Engineers) Ltd was a general engineering company based at Old Trafford, Manchester, England. It was established in the early 1920s and specialised in products to expand the use of the Fordson tractor, which in the pre-war days included sprung road wheels, bucket loaders, simple rail locomotives, and in particular in the 1930s they developed the dumper truck. Later they built high horse power tractors.
A semi-trailer is a trailer without a front axle. The combination of a semi-trailer and a tractor truck is called a semi-trailer truck.
In road transport, an oversize load is a load that exceeds the standard or ordinary legal size and/or weight limits for a truck to convey on a specified portion of road, highway, or other transport infrastructure, such as air freight or water freight. In Europe, it may be referred to as special transport or heavy and oversized transportation. There may also be load-per-axle limits. However, a load that exceeds the per-axle limits but not the overall weight limits is considered overweight. Examples of oversize/overweight loads include construction machines, pre-built homes, containers, and construction elements.
Towing is coupling two or more objects together so that they may be pulled by a designated power source or sources. The towing source may be a motorized land vehicle, vessel, animal, or human, and the load being anything that can be pulled. These may be joined by a chain, rope, bar, hitch, three-point, fifth wheel, coupling, drawbar, integrated platform, or other means of keeping the objects together while in motion.
A flatbed truck is a type of truck the bodywork of which is just an entirely flat, level 'bed' with no sides or roof. This allows for quick and easy loading of goods, and consequently they are used to transport heavy loads that are not delicate or vulnerable to rain, and also for abnormal loads that require more space than is available on a closed body. Flatbed trucks can be either articulated or rigid.
A heavy hauler is a very large transporter for moving oversize loads too large for road travel without an escort and special permit.
A self-propelled modular transporter or sometimes self-propelled modular trailer (SPMT) is a platform heavy hauler with a large array of wheels which is an upgraded version of a hydraulic modular trailer. SPMTs are used for transporting massive objects, such as large bridge sections, oil refining equipment, cranes, motors, spacecraft and other objects that are too big or heavy for trucks. Ballast tractors can however provide traction and braking for the SPMTs on inclines and descents.
A ballast tractor is a specially weighted tractor unit of a heavy hauler combination. It is designed to utilize a drawbar to pull or push heavy or exceptionally large trailer loads which are loaded in a hydraulic modular trailer. When feasible, lowboy-style semi-trailers are used to minimize the height of a load's center of mass. Typical drivetrains are 6×4 and 6×6, but 8×6 and 8×8 are also available. Typical ballast tractor loads include oil rig modules, bridge sections, buildings, ship sections, and industrial machinery such as generators and turbines.
A drawbar is a solid coupling between a hauling vehicle and its hauled load. Drawbars are in common use with rail transport, road trailers, both large and small, industrial and recreational, and with agricultural equipment.
In transportation, heavy lift refers to the handling and installation of heavy items which are indivisible, and of weights generally accepted to be over 100 tons and of widths/heights of more than 100 meters. These oversized items are transported from one place to another, then lifted or installed into place. Characteristic for heavy-lift goods is the absence of standardization, which requires individual transport planning.
The Denby Eco-Link, dubbed the super lorry by the mainstream media, is a commercial vehicle designed and built by Denby Transport of the United Kingdom. The Eco-Link is a 60 tonne fully laden, 25.25m long, 8 axle B-Train type of semi-trailer truck, in which a tractor unit pulls two semi-trailers, using fifth wheel couplings on both trailers. As one prototype of the UK Longer Heavier Vehicle (LHV) vehicle definition, which are longer and heavier than normal Large Goods Vehicles, it is not currently permitted to be used in the UK. As of 2009, the largest ordinary lorries in the UK have 6 axles and a maximum laden weight of 44 tonnes, and can be 16.5m long as single trailer semi-trailer trucks, or 18.75m as drawbar lorries.
Transporter Industry International is a worldwide operating conglomerate of companies providing heavy-duty transport vehicles and related services. Its history goes back to Otto Rettenmaier's acquisition of Scheuerle Fahrzeugfabrik in 1988. In 1995, Nicolas Industrie joined the group, followed by Kamag Transporttechnik in 2004 and TII India, which is represented by the brand Tiiger, in 2015. Transporter Industry International is the global market leader and known for transports on behalf of NASA, for example.
Steelbro Group is a heavy vehicle and crane manufacturer headquartered in Victoria, Australia. In 2013 it owned the Steelbro, Transtank, Fuelgear and Freightquip businesses. It grew from the company Steelbro, headquartered in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Nicolas Industrie S.A.S. is a French manufacturer of heavy trucks, trailers, HMT and SPMTs, mostly intended for oversize loads. Nicolas has been located in Champs-sur-Yonne since 1969, which is also when they started to develop vehicles meant particularly for very heavy loads. Their trucks, sold under the Tractomas brand, are built to single order. They most often incorporate Renault cabs and other parts, as well as a number of proprietary parts from manufacturers around the world. The Nicolas Tractomas TR1010 D100 currently holds the record as the world's largest road going truck, weighing in at 71 tonnes.
A hydraulic modular trailer (HMT) is a special platform trailer unit which feature swing axles, hydraulic suspension, independently steerable axles, two or more axle rows, compatible to join two or more units longitudinally and laterally and uses power pack unit (PPU) to steer and adjust height. These trailer units are used to transport oversized load, which are difficult to disassemble and are overweight. These trailers are manufactured using high tensile steel, which makes it possible to bear the weight of the load with the help of one or more ballast tractors which push and pull these units via drawbar or gooseneck this combination of tractor and trailer is also termed as heavy hauler.
Faymonville Group is a trailer and heavy transport equipment manufacturer operating worldwide. Started back in the 1960s in Rocherath, Belgium as a blacksmith shop later started to manufacture and sell agriculture machines and tractor cabins in 1962 opened a new production unit to fulfill the demand of forestry vehicles. In the late 1960s, the company manufactured its first semi-trailer. Today it manufactures every type of trailer for different transportation needs, ranging from flatbeds to SPMTs. With 4 production facilities spread around Europe in Luxembourg, Belgium, Poland and Italy while having its headquarters in Luxembourg.
Nicolas Tractomas is a heavy-duty built-to-order ballast tractor specifically to tow hydraulic modular trailers and road trains used for movement of oversize loads manufactured by French manufacturer Nicolas Industrie based in Auxerre. The tractor was bespoke build with preferred engine, gearbox, drivetrain and ballast with a Renault kerax cabin. The production of the tractor began in 1979 and lasted till 2016. The TR1010 D100 model of the tractor was awarded the Guinness World Record in 2015 for the largest road truck in the world, weighing 71 tons.