Land Energy and our main forest operations contractor, Thompson Plant Hire (of Maryport, Cumbria), are proud to be leading the way in protecting the fragile rural road network in SW Scotland, while working to recover and process brash (lop and top) for use as a sustainable biomass feedstock for our CHP plant at Girvan.
Thompson’s have provided us with three dedicated and specially modified lorries to haul the chipped brash. The tractor units are fitted with a Central Tyre Inflation (CTI) system, which allows the driver to lower the pressure of the vehicle’s tyres, from within the cab, which creates a larger ‘footprint’ for each tyre. This reduces pressure on the structure of the road.
In addition, the trailers have been modified to run on ‘Maxi Tyre’ rather than conventional ‘super single’ tyres. Maxi’s are significantly wider and therefore also create a larger ‘footprint’ to compliment the benefits of the CTI system.
While the use of CTI and Maxi Tyres is common place in round timber haulage in the region, we believe that Thompson’s are the first company in the UK to have modified walking-floor trailers to enable this configuration to be used on lorries pulling bulk trailers in a forestry setting.