Skips throws on some clothes

The solution entails a vehicle with a specialist body working in tandem with bottom discharge containers, which aims to reduce the cost of emptying, collecting and weighing the contents of textile banks. Two of the vehicles and ninety containers are already in use.

Textile banks are conventionally serviced by a ‘man and a van’, using a 3.5USt van or 7.5USt truck. However, as participation in recycling has increased, and this form of emptying has become more widely adopted, the refuse banks have grown in size. It can now take thirty to forty-five minutes to empty a large bank.

In the past a number of methods have been tried in order to replace this labour-intensive procedure, reduce collection costs and improve efficiency.

The new approach from Skips Group adapts the modular banks utilised in paper and plastics collection. Rather than being unloaded through the conventional door at the front, the banks are now lifted up by a remote control crane into the discharge vehicle and a release mechanism operates from the crane opens flaps in the bottom to release the load.

This system aims to help increase productivity, as a single engineer can unload a bank in about ten minutes.

Already supplied by Truck Specialists, the vehicles are modelled on a MAN TGS 26-400 6 x 2 chassis with a steering rear axle, fitted with a HMF1220K3 hydraulic crane behind the cab. Features include a textile bank release mechanism, full remote control, and a Class IV loadcell installation, which allows the issue of a Weights and Measures-approved weight ticket that confirms the weight of the textiles received at the point of collection.

Skips Group states that the concept can be adapted to the requirements of clients with smaller operations, which would include smaller cranes and bodies.

Once collected, the crane moves the textiles into a bank fitted with a Keith Walking Floor and ‘Slide’n’Cover’ sheeting system to keep the contents dry. When returning to the depot, the textiles are discharged again, into areas for progressive sorting, out of the user’s sorting and discharge area.

ISO 9001:2000 approved, the Skips Units Group is the UK’s largest steel container and skips equipment manufacturer for the waste industry. The other members of the group, as well as Truck Specialists Ltd., are Waste Equipment Rentals, Castle Containers and Randalls, which produces Simpak compactors.