Roughly three hours’ drive north of Brisbane, hidden within the Tuan State Forest, lies a bustling hub of Queensland’s timber industry.
As dawn breaks, iconic Elphinstone Long Logger trailers, led by bright green Mack SuperLiners, rumble along neatly graded gravel roads on their daily pilgrimage to transport plantation timber to a nearby sawmill.
What makes this operation unique, however, is the modern ingenuity of the Elphinstone Long Logger trailers. These behemoths of timber transport are more than mere carriers – they are architects of efficiency, designed to cradle vast loads of sustainable plantation timber with consistent high payload accuracy and unwavering stability.
“The Sunchip Group is a harvesting and haulage contractor based in the Fraser Coast region in Queensland,” says Sunchip Group Transport Supervisor Tuan and Toolara, Michael Whish-Wilson. “We’ve been operating here for the last 26 years, and for most of that, we have been using Elphinstone logging equipment.
“Today, we run about 15 of their units. We predominantly use Long Logger trailers working around the clock 24 hours a day, five days a week.”
Sunchip Group owner and founder, Mark Blackberry, worked with Graeme Elphinstone to develop the Long Logger trailers which now allow the fleet to cart up to 1.5 million tonnes of sustainable plantation pine annually.
“The Long Logger trailers permit us to do such high volumes because they allow us to safely cart long lengths up to 18.3 meters on the B-double route and achieve a 45-tonne payload with fast loading and unloading times,” Michael says.
Image: Elphinstone Engineering.The combinations, Michael explains, are essentially a hybrid between a skel trailer and a jinker, with the skel trailer being up front and the stinger-steered jinker connected to the rear of the front trailers.
The trailers themselves fold and unfold automatically. According to Michael, there’s virtually no manual input required from the drivers either as it can all be done from inside the cab. Most importantly, he says, the trailers are very user-friendly and dependable.
“You know they will work day in and day out,” he says. “The original Long Logger trailers that we started running back in 2008 had a lifespan of about 15 years and covered millions and millions of kilometres. To put that into perspective, we replace prime movers every four to five years and merely connect the older trailers to them.
“Each of those original trailers carted well over a million tonnes per unit over their lifespan. That being said, we also have a comprehensive maintenance program to ensure all our equipment gets maintained in first-class condition.”
Also fitted to the fleet’s Long Loggers are Elphinstone’s EasyWeigh MultiReaders. Located in the cabin, the systems are connected to 1660 load cells mounted under each bolster on the trailers to weigh each load accurately.
“Our overload percentages are virtually zero, a terrific result given that we’re doing 100 plus B-double loads of timber a day and go months and months without a single overload,” Michael says. “In an environment with so many variables, still having such reliability out of the scales is just unreal.”
The investment in accurate onboard scales, Michael explains, certainly pays big dividends in the long run.
“If we underload each truck by as little as 1.5 tonnes per load, that means we’re losing over 150 tonnes of productivity per day,” he says. “That’s 750 tonnes per week, which is the equivalent of about 16 extra loads we’d need to do to cart that same amount of wood. Therefore, I can’t emphasise the importance of Elphinstone’s accurate onboard scales enough.”
As the sun dips below the horizon and each day comes to a close, Sunchip Group’s pine logging operations linger, etched into the very fabric of the landscape.
In the waning light, the imposing figures of the fleet’s Elphinstone Long Logger trailers and prime movers stand tall, weaving their way through the labyrinth of trees.
Each laden with 45 tonnes of sustainable plantation timber, the Elphinstone Long Logger trailers echo in the distance with the promise of a bright future for Sunchip Group, for years to come.
Image: Elphinstone Engineering.The post Sunchip Group invests in 10 Elphinstone Long Loggers appeared first on Trailer Magazine.