Trailer Buyers Seek Looks, Durability

By Frederick Kiel, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the June 11 print edition of Transport Topics.
Despite the wide gap in price and technology between tractors and trailers, trucking firms are often just as exacting in what they demand in the trailers they buy as they are for the trucks.
“Buying a trailer is like buying a house, because you don’t live with it for a week but for 10 to 20 years,” Ira Rosenfeld, spokesman for UPS Freight, told Transport Topics. “That’s a lot longer than most companies keep new
trucks, selling them after three or four years.”
UPS Freight is a division of UPS Inc., Atlanta, which ranks No. 1 on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada.
“We put a higher emphasis on quality than price when we’re buying new trailers,” Terry Kultgen, president of regional carrier Transport National, Oak Creek, Wis., told TT. Transport National owns 200 flatbeds.
“Price is certainly a consideration, but with the type of trailers we use so important for the success of our business, we first must make sure that a company will build the trailer with all the characteristics that we consider crucial,” he said.
Transport National buys 20 to 30 flatbeds a year for three distinct operations, Kultgen said, and rotates among three different trailer manufacturers, “because we found that each one builds the best of one type of trailer.”
His comments were similar to those of several dozen fleet owners, managers and spokesmen who discussed how and why their companies bought trailers. They also have as many specific requests for trailer components as they do for truck options.
“We do have a unique GE spec for the dry vans that we buy,” said Patrick Brennan, spokesman for GE Trailer Fleet Services, which has 135,000 trailers for lease or rent. “Our purchases are overweighted to trailers made of composite materials that have logistic post construction to allow double levels of pallets and a spring suspension and air ride to offer cargo a softer ride.”
GE Trailer Fleet Services also requires trailer manufacturers to install VeriWise asset management, a GE proprietary system that allows companies to monitor trailer conditions and activities, Brennan said.
“These specs are based on our experience of over 50 years in learning what lasts the longest in trailers and what services our customers prefer,” Brennan said.
Ed Richardson, vice president of equipment and maintenance for less-than-truckload carrier Old Dominion Freight Line, told TT, “In most cases, we tell manufacturers that we want doors, landing gear, lighting, wheels, tires and braking systems from specific producers to be put into trailers they make for us.”
Old Dominion, Thomasville, N.C., is No. 24 on TT’s for-hire list. It operates about 20,000 trailers and bought 1,700 to 1,800 new ones this year, Richardson said.
“We order them in one single purchase, but we have delivery scattered over the course of the year,” Richardson said.
Truckload carrier Schneider National Inc. has 35,000 trailers, the vast majority of them dry vans, said Steve Duley, senior vice president of linehaul purchasing. Schneider, Green Bay, Wis., keeps trailers for 10 years and buys 4,000 to 6,000 new ones yearly.
“We spec out [designating component manufacturers’] landing gear, axles, tires and brakes,” Duley said. “We found that loading pallets can damage composite walls, so that we developed with manufacturers inner walls in which the bottom half is aluminum, which doesn’t get damaged and is just as thin, and the top half composite.”
A.C.T. Research, Columbus, Ind., said that 281,000 trailers were sold in the United States in 2006. Unlike other sectors of the vehicle business, 90% of trailers and their component parts are manufactured in the United States and Canada, truck companies and trailer builders said, although several trailer producers said price pressure is forcing them to look abroad for components, especially to Asia.
About 25 U.S. manufacturers produce 85% of the trailers for the Class 8 market. The largest companies are Wabash National Corp., Lafayette, Ind.; Great Dane Trailers, Savannah, Ga.; Trailmobile Corp., Lake Forest, Ill.; Utility Trailer Manufacturing Co., City of Industry, Calif.; and Stoughton Trailers LLC, Stoughton, Wis.
Hyundai Translead, a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Co. Korea, operates a plant in Tijuana, Mexico, that builds trailers, containers and container chassis.
“As a NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] company, we don’t export to the United States,” Glenn Harney, Hyundai Translead’s chief operating officer, told TT. “We are considered a U.S. company.”
Harney said 80% of components that go into the company’s products are from the United States and Canada, with most of the rest from Asia and a much smaller percentage from Mexico.
Harney also said that Hyundai Translead delivered 14,498 trailers, 10,792 container chassis and 4,995 domestic containers in 2006. That’s up from 2005, when the company delivered 11,514 trailers, 15,427 container chassis and 3,246 domestic containers.
Harney said that much of the factory’s output is sold in California and other West Coast states because the trailers can be used to pick up freight in California’s ports, haul it to a population center near the buyer, and then be delivered to the company, drastically cutting delivery costs.
CIMC, a Chinese container company, bought out bankrupt American trailer maker HPA Monon Corp. in 2004 and renamed it Vanguard National Trailer, Robert Taylor, Vanguard director of sales, told TT.
“Our parent company, CIMC, is 100% committed to becoming the largest trailer company in the world,” Taylor said. “CIMC is already the world’s largest producer of shipping containers and sold 30,000 chassis in North America, South America and Europe for shipping containers last year.”
Taylor said Vanguard sold more than 8,000 trailers of all types in the United States and Canada in 2006, with components that were 80% made in North America and assembled in its Monon, Ind., plant.
“We do use some prefabricated parts, such as galvanized steel gate lifts from China, because they’re much cheaper and of better quality,” Taylor said.
Even a small company can get trailers built to its specifications, manufacturers said.
“If a customer wants to wait, even if he’s buying just one trailer, he can get it built to any specs that he wants,” Gene Masteller, sales manager of Atlantic Great Dane in South Portland, Maine, told TT. “If they have an immediate need, they’ll buy one off of our lot that has perhaps 70% of what he wanted, but he has it immediately.”
Masteller said that, though prices vary widely, a new top-of-the-line tractor generally costs about five times more than high-quality dry vans or flat beds.
“A new, premier tractor can cost $150,000, while a top-grade trailer or flatbed can cost $25,000 to $30,000,” Masteller said. “Refrigerated trailers are on a whole different level — if the trucker wants a full-blown reefer with partitions and separate temperature areas, it can cost $100,000.”
Computerization, electronics, composite materials, aerodynamics and countless research studies have made trucks lighter, safer and easier to use and have connected them in live time to fleet headquarters. Technology is also bringing advances to trailers, though it often is not as visible.
“Trailers are evolving constantly, to the point that a specific model might have three new advancements built into it separately over three months,” Chris Hammond, vice president of dealer sales for Great Dane, told TT.
Great Dane built 60,000 trailers in 2006 and 55,000 in 2005 — 65% dry vans, 25% reefers and 10% flatbeds, Hammond said.
“Our engineers and salespeople are constantly looking at what to do to satisfy the marketplace,” Hammond said. “Customer feedback has called for satellite tracking, roll stability, [automatic] tire inflation and materials stronger and longer-lasting than the plywood that used to form the inside walls, which means composites, all of which are now in trailers.”
“Most trucking companies come to us with specs,” Stoughton Trailers president Ken Wahlin told TT. “Composite doors have become very popular lately. The entry of composite material has made roll-up doors much more long-lasting and dependable than the old single metal models, and they’re becoming very popular.”
Lead time from ordering a trailer to delivery varies from 30 days or less to four to five months for requests with many complicated options, Wahlin said.
“Con-way Inc. trucking companies want a trailer that will last for 20 years with as little maintenance as possible,” Lynn Reinbolt, president of Road Systems International, told TT.
Road Systems, a Con-way subsidiary that specializes in building dry van trailers, builds 5,000 trailers yearly, with 4,000 of them going to Con-way trucking
companies and 1,000 sold to other truckers. Con-way, a transportation and logistics company, ranks No. 6 on TT’s for-hire carriers list.
“Many trailers have floors built of oak, but Road Systems uses a special white oak in all our trailers that’s the same kind used for barrels to age whiskey,” Reinbolt said. “The white oak has a very dense structure that lasts longer than any other wood, and on top of that, we put on a coat of special chemical that binds to the wood and prevents moisture from getting into the oak.”
Reinbolt said moisture getting into the floor boards is one of the key reasons why trailers deteriorate early, “especially for those based in the muggy Southeast or rainy Northwest.”
Transportation and logistics company Southeastern Freight Lines, Lexington, S.C., holds its trailers between 15 and 18 years, and currently has 7,000 trailers. Southeastern, which ranks No. 32 on the Transport Topics list of top for-hire carriers, has a different buying pattern from those of companies that take delivery throughout the year.
“We order trailers as far as two years in advance but generally in September and October, with delivery for the following March,” said Duke Drinkard, Southeastern’s vice president of maintenance. “We don’t take old trailers out of our system until the autumn, so that gives us the maximum number of trailers during the summer, when freight is usually the heaviest.”
Most truckers said that trailers have a limit of 20 years of use, but trailers can be useful far beyond that time frame.
Road Systems’ Reinbolt said that his company completely rebuilds 20-year trailers to run another 20 years.
“A trailer can be used over-the-road for 10 or 15 years, and then be used locally for another 10 years and then by farmers who run them on their farm and then move them to storage use,” Reinbolt said.
“A lot of logistic companies also use old trailers not fit for the road anymore as storage containers for who knows how long,” he said. “Other people even use them as highway advertising billboards.”