Argos double-deck trucks

tomb353

These have just started to appear on my commute - blooming 'eck they are big. Tried to slipstream one downhill just as it hit a load of grit and road dust, nice. Anyone else come across them?

only picture i could find was of one being pulled upright after blowing over:

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suzyb

Seen a few yeah. Used to see the woolworths ones more often when they were in delivering to one of the stores though.

Tonymufc

The trailers are called mega-decks. There's two levels within the trailer and a hydrolic tail lift situated just insde the rear doors. Approximate height of vehicle is 16 feet 1 inch. Very high indeed for an artic.

mudcovered

suzyb wrote:

Seen a few yeah. Used to see the woolworths ones more often when they were in delivering to one of the stores though.

Got passed by a similar sized (non Argos) one last week on the A4 while doing about 25mph. Driver gave me loads of room but the size of the hole they punch in the air is so huge I got sucked into the hole in the air behind it taking my speed up to 30mph almost immediately. They are very easy to draft as you can be a long way behind them to do it meaning that the driver can still see you in the mirrors.

Wouldn't want to meet one in a narrow town/city environment though.

Mike

redvee

Quite a common sight going between distribution centres, usually favoured by parcel companies on their trunk routes to the sorting hub.

tomb353

for some reason these argos ones have suddenly started using a route in my area which takes them down suburban high streets (including 20mph zone), can only think something in their satnav is doing it. Logically as long as they are passing at low speed they shouldn't have any more impact than a regular LGV, but still make you nervous.

lost_in_thought

I see a fair few of these out and about...

They have to navigate a lot of very small B roads round here, I don't envy them that job.

MadammeMarie

lost_in_thought wrote:

I see a fair few of these out and about...

They have to navigate a lot of very small B roads round here, I don't envy them that job.

B roads????? Lorries this size should not be allowed anywhere that's not a motorway. The UK is not the US.

lost_in_thought

MadammeMarie wrote:

lost_in_thought wrote:

I see a fair few of these out and about...

They have to navigate a lot of very small B roads round here, I don't envy them that job.

B roads????? Lorries this size should not be allowed anywhere that's not a motorway. The UK is not the US.

Out here in essex/suffolk, we don't have motorways. Have a look at Gmaps if you don't believe me. We do have several very busy ports, and one or two large A roads, but they don't cover anywhere near enough area. I personally would prefer to have large lorries around on B roads to having local industry die out.

Porgy

I get untold numbers of them on my commute - due to being close to route down to Dover etc. - and the various docks on Thames estuary - also a lot of these biggies seem to come down straight from Suffolk/Norfolk and come across on the Dartford bridge or even on the Woolwich Ferry on occasion.

I used to cycle on the pavement on the A20 due these things being just about every other vehicle - including the Argos variety.

I reckon its bad news when these start appearing in rural areas - a sure sign that small local and independent businesses are being usurped by mega corporations - and little shops are being replaced by those massive out of town supermarkets - my own experience being in Norfolk and Devon - little towns going bust as a result and these monsters on inapprpriately little roads.

tomb353

looking at the height of the trailer vs the cab it looks like the argos ones are even bigger than the palletline ones. I just hope that they put the better drivers in these things. Have emailed the local council cycling officer to see what he thinks. If they stay on my commute may just have to work on drafting technique, there must be a sweet spot where they pull you along without actually sweeping you up into a mini-tornado like dust storm.

always_tyred

Can I suggest to the OP that slipstreaming motorvehicles is not a good idea?

Mr_Cellophane

I have looked though the latest catalogue, but I can't see one. Which page are they on ?

spen666

Always Tyred wrote:

Can I suggest to the OP that slipstreaming motorvehicles is not a good idea?

you can suggest it to the OP, but whether anyone takes notice is a different matter :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :evil: :evil: :evil:

tomb353

Always Tyred wrote:

Can I suggest to the OP that slipstreaming motorvehicles is not a good idea?

yes, you can suggest it, but much depends on the quality of your brakes, how close you go and the speed you hit. There are parts of my route when if I can catch the bus it feels safer because I am up at the prevailing motor traffic speed rather than 5 mph below it. As someone above suggests, catching the argos truck could involve being 10-15 ft behind it as it is so blooming huge.

always_tyred

tomb353 wrote:

Always Tyred wrote:

Can I suggest to the OP that slipstreaming motorvehicles is not a good idea?

yes, you can suggest it, but much depends on the quality of your brakes, how close you go and the speed you hit. There are parts of my route when if I can catch the bus it feels safer because I am up at the prevailing motor traffic speed rather than 5 mph below it. As someone above suggests, catching the argos truck could involve being 10-15 ft behind it as it is so blooming huge.

As much as 15 ft? Wow, that's almost a car length.
Knock yourself out! (potentially).

tomb353

have never researched the relative stopping distances for an LGV of this size vs a cyclocross bike with disk brakes & 28mm tyres, but would suspect that i can stop quicker from 30 mph than he can. On the busses you get a second or two warning from the change in the engine note before they brake which seems to help.

always_tyred

tomb353 wrote:

have never researched the relative stopping distances for an LGV of this size vs a cyclocross bike with disk brakes & 28mm tyres, but would suspect that i can stop quicker from 30 mph than he can. On the busses you get a second or two warning from the change in the engine note before they brake which seems to help.

Okay, well, my car has disc brakes all round. I'm sure it can stop faster than an HGV.

Does that mean it is safe for me to tail gate HGV's on the motorway?

Porgy

Always Tyred wrote:

tomb353 wrote:

have never researched the relative stopping distances for an LGV of this size vs a cyclocross bike with disk brakes & 28mm tyres, but would suspect that i can stop quicker from 30 mph than he can. On the busses you get a second or two warning from the change in the engine note before they brake which seems to help.

Okay, well, my car has disc brakes all round. I'm sure it can stop faster than an HGV.

Does that mean it is safe for me to tail gate HGV's on the motorway?

AT - if the aptly named tomb353 is under 25 then I suspect you're wasting your time. at that age you know no fear. With luck he'll survive his learning experiences and develop a level of self preservation. Or he won't and we can nominate him for the Darwin awards.

always_tyred

Porgy, you may be right.

Tomb - do the maths - imagine that the vehicle in front of you suddenly decelerates. If there is a 10kph speed differential, it will take you about 1 second to travel about 3m, which is about how much distance you think you are leaving. I would say that it would take less than a second for even and HGV to decelerate by that amount.

So you could be wondering what on earth happened to cause you to crash into the back of an HGV in around 1-2 seconds.

Also, at 40kph, you have maybe 0.2 or 0,3 seconds to react to anything on the road which emerges into your field of view from under the HGV you are tailgating. That's not a lot of time to do anything about potholes, glass or other detritus.

tomb353

i'll take the 25 comment as a complement!

slightly different calculation on a motorway me thinks.

Each to their own, personally i will only get up close and personal with a bus / truck on my commute where I know every pothole (and busstop). In practice I find that if you can maintain speed with the motorised traffic and keep in the middle of the road you avoid many of the potholes.

15ft is considerably more than 3m, your calculation also assumes a constant speed differential of 10kph, which isn't quite right is it? Don't think my maths is up to constructing an effective model, but I think we're talking curves rather than straight line graphs.

ravey1981

4.5 metres. A world of difference :roll:

I have drafted trucks in the past. I was there when one braked. You cannot react on the brakes. I had to veer off into the verge. I crashed into a wall. It hurt. A lot.

I'm not doing it again.

For you're own sake follow my example.

tomb353

to return to the initial post, despite obvious drafting potential don't really think these trucks are suitable for suburban streets

tomb353

bstd demolition contractor has now started running huge dumper trucks on my commute as well, for some reason always in pairs. My rational brain is more scared of the dumper trucks, but emotionally the argos supersizers trouble me more :?

always_tyred

tomb353 wrote:

i'll take the 25 comment as a complement!

slightly different calculation on a motorway me thinks.

Each to their own, personally i will only get up close and personal with a bus / truck on my commute where I know every pothole (and busstop). In practice I find that if you can maintain speed with the motorised traffic and keep in the middle of the road you avoid many of the potholes.

15ft is considerably more than 3m, your calculation also assumes a constant speed differential of 10kph, which isn't quite right is it? Don't think my maths is up to constructing an effective model, but I think we're talking curves rather than straight line graphs.

I was trying to use nice round numbers.

No, there are no instantaneous speed changes. I am certain you don't drive, mate. You seem to have no appreciation whatsoever of how quickly things can happen. We are talking about fractions of a second. If you happen to be shoulder checking or not quite paying attention when the brake lights first come on, you use up all of the time available to you to avoid a problem.

And your assumption that you only draft where you know what is on the road.... you know what is probably on the road. You ever hear that statistic that most rta's happen within 5 minutes from home? Ever wonder why that is? It is becuase you just never know.

You will probably be okay. But equally, there is a chance that you'll have a nasty experience eventually, which will put a dent into your invincibility forcefield. You have two options - either learn from your own mistakes, or learn from the collective experience of others. Are you the sort of person who, when warned that something is hot, touches it, discovers that it hurts, and verifies that its hot? Or are you the sort of person who reasons that because it came out of the oven, its hot, and therefore doesn't touch it?

As to your original post - I don't see how a tall HGV is any more dangerous than any other. I don't like them, but I don't see anything in particular about the Argos ones to worry about more.

davis

Always Tyred wrote:

You ever hear that statistic that most rta's happen within 5 minutes from home? Ever wonder why that is? It is becuase you just never know.

Actually I think that's quite likely attributable to the fact that a lot of people spend such a lot of time on the roads which are local to their house -- especially for short journeys -- and the roads that you use for longer journeys such as trunk roads and motorways have completely different, and usually more predictable, traffic patterns.

Not to detract from your general point, because I agree with you; that statistic is just such a simple quotable analysis of a complex situation that it bugs me. Yes, I realise my "analysis" isn't much less facile.

always_tyred

davis wrote:

Always Tyred wrote:

You ever hear that statistic that most rta's happen within 5 minutes from home? Ever wonder why that is? It is becuase you just never know.

Actually I think that's quite likely attributable to the fact that a lot of people spend such a lot of time on the roads which are local to their house -- especially for short journeys -- and the roads that you use for longer journeys such as trunk roads and motorways have completely different, and usually more predictable, traffic patterns.

Not to detract from your general point, because I agree with you; that statistic is just such a simple quotable analysis of a complex situation that it bugs me. Yes, I realise my "analysis" isn't much less facile.

I understood it to derive from the fact that people are very familiar with their local roads, more prone to complacency, and are thus much more likely to be caught by suprise.

If you are on unfamiliar roads, you are more attentive, generally.

Hence, I see a similarity with cycling assuming you know what it coming on the road surface, because to cycle along it every day.

fnb1

Speaking from the position of a cyclist of more than 30 years who has manged the operation of HGVs for most of those thirty years.

I would not recomend drafting large double deck trailers, recipe for disaster sooner of later, all the previous mentions of not being able to indentify broekn surface, drain covers of debris on the road, your are too far from the engine to hear the lift off, which would likely be drowned out by the drivetrain noise anyway, also bear in mind at our sort of speeds, say up to 35mph their brake performance would surprise you, particualry the Argos type mentioned as they will seldom be operating at anything close to their design weights (which for typical tractor units will be in the 60tonnes region) never mind their max permissable weight in the UK, 44 tonnes (that is why they are double deck as one of them negates the need for a second single deck = less trucks on the road, Comet Electrical and some others run triple deckers) so you have a braking system designed to stop at least a 44tonne mass from motorway speeds operating through 12 very large disc brakes (probabaly with ABS), it can pull up sharply if it needs to and will stop quicker than you on a bike, you will have what is know as a OHF accident, as that is all you will get to say before you hit the back of it.

Most of their miles are indeed done on Motorways and in and out of industrial parks where the Distribution Depots tend to be but I guess they may be using a few to deliver to larger stores in towns or as LIT rightly points out where there are no larger roads, but rememebr one of them mean one less of the single decks for the same footprint more or less the same fuel consumption etc

As an aside, they do look a lot higher and longer than other trucks due to then typically being 'step frame' trailers on small wheels which makes for a large expanse of body work making them look over tall, typically the high ones are no more than 2 feet higher than a standard trailer and will usually be the same length, namely 13.6m (the combination of truck and trailer being 16.5m).

Much more scary would be the tipper trucks (or various other types of construction industry truck), they tend to be driven by drivers, shall we say somewhat lower down the truck driver evolutionary scale and tend behave as such.

Headhuunter

Saw one of these beasts last night, a Boot's one. They're bloody enormous! Like a building on wheels. Somehow it didn't seem as long as your usual artic though. Bit stupid allowing them on busy city streets, IMO