Liberty Rural and Tieman – regional fuel delivered safely

Rural fuel delivery drivers work around tough road conditions that can be challenging to the very best. So, when a design innovation can offer increased safety it makes sense to give the drivers the safest tanker combination industry can offer.

Tieman have been building aluminium fuel tankers in multiple configurations since 1988. Rigid and dog trailer combinations have evolved over time from three-axle to four-axle and are more common in some areas of Australia than others. It has been an unfortunate legacy that over the years the industry has experienced many dog trailer roll overs, sometimes causing injury and often a loss of product.

Tieman were first in the fuel industry with its Performance-Based Standards (PBS) 20m rigid and dog combination in 2015. Not to stop there, Tieman’s latest 20m PBS rigid and dog innovation, the ‘Train’ dog, is an evolution of design simply to increase the safety of the tankers especially at speed on cambered and uneven country roads.

Tieman’s latest design expands its roll-coupled range from the first roll-coupled PBS 42m ‘Tri Train’ design and now integrates a rear underrun and turntable coupling to the rear of a rigid fuel truck in lieu of a standard Ringfeder coupling.

A special Tieman drawbar has an integrated skid plate and removable kingpin that connects to the greaseless turntable. Not only does the design reduce the risk of rollover at speed but maintenance costs are reduced with the simple replacement of a removable kingpin in lieu of replacing high wearing drawbar tow eyes and Ringfeders.

The four new Liberty Rural Tieman 20m PBS ‘Train’ dog combinations have the latest ‘Swift’ meterless pumping systems fitted by Liquip VIC. Each has Diptronic tank gauging and Liquip manifolds fitted with a suction line, allowing the fuel from the dog trailer to be measured accurately when discharging product using the rigid truck pump. Pre-setting volumes required when choosing gravity, bulk discharge or through the hose reels offers high accuracy and is user friendly for all operators. A benefit of the system is once it is calibrated it never has to be calibrated again and training of new drivers is simple especially when located in remote areas of Australia.

Alfons Haar pumps and lightweight aluminium air operated hose reels were chosen to ensure that only the very best in industry components are fitted to all combined Tieman and Liquip VIC builds.

Liberty Rural also invested in multiple Tieman ‘Fuel Shifter’ combinations with ‘Swift’ systems. The ‘Fuel Shifter’ innovation by Tieman was first introduced around 2005 and was the first front-of-tanker mounted hose reel design. This Tieman concept is now preferred by many fuel distributors around Australia.

Darren Karslake, National Operations Manager for Liberty Rural, has had very positive feedback from drivers to date underpinning his investment decision to choose Tieman.

“Feedback from our experienced driver Chris Goodsall in Rockhampton has been extremely positive,” he says. “Having towed rigid and dog trailers with conventional Ringfeders, he says the new Tieman roll coupled design is tracking better with no movement and sway at speed on their undulating Queensland roads. That’s what we hoped to achieve and why we are always looking for ways to improve safety for our drivers and other road users.”

Col Tieman, Tieman Tankers Director, is extremely proud that 100 per cent of their bulk liquid tankers are manufactured in Australia.

“In recent times more apprentices have been employed, more manufacturing equipment has been purchased and extra skilled trades people and engineers have joined the Tieman team to keep up with customer demand,” he says. “The many customers who invest with Tieman should be pleased that their support is going back into local Australian job creation to build the most innovative and best quality tankers in the industry.”