Nooteboom carries ballast

Introduced by Nooteboom in mid-2017, one brief for the new design is to carry cranes and ballasts within the 100-tonne legal limit for road transport that has come into force in the Netherlands. Nooteboom’s previous design, the flatbed OBV-95-07, uses seven Pendle axles with loadings of up to 10t per axle, giving a total of 70t maximum load weight. More than 650 examples have been sold since its launch in 2015.

The latest offering, the MPL-97-06, has six axles, each able to carry a 12t loading, so giving a greater maximum load weight, of 72t, in a shorter overall length. That shorter length gives greater manoevreability. A suspension stroke of 500mm and a large steering angle of 60 degrees also assist.

Nooteboom is targeting the trailer specifically at the crane industry; it is, they say, ideal for the transport of crane parts and crane ballast. They point to the lower load floor, of 780mm, which mitigates the risks of work at height. The trailer chassis is strengthened with an extra high central beam to prevent bending; the 12t axle loading allows for better weight distribution, they say, as it makes it easier to distribute the ballast evenly across the load floor.

And because the load floor is about half a metre lower than on the 7-axle flatbed, ballast and boom sections can be loaded on top of one another.

Nooteboom has sold three of the new trailers to Wagenborg, who are using them mainly to transport a Terex AC500-2, and one to Peinemann, who have had it customised to carry components for a Liebherr LTM1750.