Fruehauf’s hydraulic blower drops a tonne of tare
Fruehauf has taken the auxiliary engine off its blower trailer and replaced it with a PTO-driven hydraulic system, removing around a tonne of tare weight and returning it to payload.
The move also takes an entire second powertrain out of the service schedule.
The blower carries bulk animal feed and discharges it pneumatically into farm silos. Until now, that discharge has been powered by a separate diesel engine mounted on the trailer: a donkey engine, with its own fuel system, its own service schedule and its own failure modes, carried on every mile of every journey whether the trailer is blowing or not. The hydraulic drive takes power from the tractor unit instead.
“Hydraulic drive is the future,” said Neale Jones, blower specialist at Fruehauf, who spent more than 40 years as an operator and an owner before moving to the design side. “It’s lighter, more economical, and easier to maintain.”
The weight saving is the headline figure – approximately one tonne, on a trailer rated to carry up to 28 tonnes – but it is the maintenance case that tends to persuade operators who have run the old arrangement, says Fruehauf. Taking out the auxiliary engine removes a second powertrain from the service schedule, along with its emissions, its noise on the farm and the fuel it burns.
The body is aluminium, built in collaboration with Ali Bulk Systems. Internal partitions are specified to order rather than fixed: the operator chooses how many the trailer carries and how many of those lock, so compartments can be set up for the feed types on that customer’s runs without cross-contamination. Brush seals close the compartments. The trailer can be specified to tip front or rear.
A poultry feed manufacturer has completed initial trials, reporting favourably on performance and reliability; the trailer has since been sanitised and certified for further trials.
The blower is built at Fruehauf’s 64-acre Grantham facility alongside the company’s sloper, stepframe, halfpipe and bathtub tipping trailers.
