Industrial transports by Scheuerle

Scheuerle has built and delivered two industrial transporters (SHT) for Taiwanese ship builder, CSBC China Shipbuilding Corporation. Kaohsiung-based CSBC already has a number of these vehicles.

Both Scheuerle SHTs are 18 m long, 7.5 m wide and 1.5 m high and are designed to move ship sections weighing up to 500 tonnes. The vehicles have 8-axle lines with two quadruple-tyred pendulum axles, meaning loads are transported on 64 wheels.

The hydrostatic drive guarantees jerk-free setting off and continuously variable acceleration, says the manufacturer. "The precise steering response of the pendulum axle technology allows millimetre-exact positioning of the ship sections," says a company spokesman.

In addition, the functional axle compensation automatically offers a uniform distribution of load on all wheels when travelling on uneven surfaces, says Scheuerle.

The steering angle of +/- 165° and the selectable steering programmes, such as regular, transverse, diagonal and circle, provide the vehicles with excellent manoeuvrability, adds the company. The 104 tonne vehicle is steered via a high-tech driver's cab equipped with monitors.

In a nighttime transport, the two SHTs were transferred from the Pfedelbach plant in Germany to the heavy-load port in Heilbronn. This was not, however, done with low bed trailers as is usually the case.

The transporters were driven 30 km to their destination. After a 4.5 hour trip, they reached the heavy load quay at Heilbronn where they were lifted onto a pontoon designed to handle extremely heavy loads.

They were shipped along the Neckar river, then along the Rhine and Schelde to Rotterdam. After being reloaded onto a seagoing vessel, the one-month voyage to Kaohsiung in Taiwan began in the North Sea and via the Suez Canal in Egypt.