The light fantastic

A pair of brand new artic combos were designed in-house at Davidson’s Animal feeds, with input and feedback from the drivers

- John Henderson

Forget the stereotypical image of corporate team building away days with corny ice-breaking games, mission statements and inspirational clichés. William Davidson, operations director at Davidsons Animal Feeds does things very differently.

Back in 2018, he teamed up with two of his drivers for a specialist project. The brief was to conceive, design and build two new non-tipping, bulk animal feed artic transporters. Now, after almost 18 months in service, William feels both he and his drivers can offer solid feedback on the experience with these ground breaking artics.

“With farm animal feed deliveries, there is no such thing as standard,’ he explains. ‘Every farm has its own unique access point and feed storage system. There are always height, length and width restrictions to consider, no two farms are the same. Our drivers have a comprehensive knowledge of these sites, gained over years of visiting. Their input was vital when designing new equipment.”

Davidson’s wanted to replace three eight-wheeler rigids with two non-tipping artics. “We needed to look at our reliance on 8x4s and trim their numbers back a bit. Since Euro 6 technologies were introduced they’d become too heavy. In days past around 75% of our deliveries were via eight-wheelers. It was a brave move putting five axle artics into places we’d never considered them right for before, but now 62% of our deliveries can be completed with the new tag unit and steering trailer combinations.”