Symons Clark Logistics deploys 26 PBS skels

Symons Clark Logistics has become embedded in South Australia’s transport industry over 150 years of operations.

The company was founded in 1875 in the suburb of Rosewater by Cornish blacksmith, Thomas Symons, to service the state’s growing agriculture trade. It then went on to evolve from a small carrier into a leading national logistics provider – a change which was solidified in 1981 when the business was purchased by Alby Clark.

Alby’s sons, Ricky and David, and grandsons, Jason and James, have rebranded Symons Clark Logistics to a diverse logistics operation consisting of more than 300 employees and multiple depots throughout SA. These locations have been established within close proximities to key shipping, intermodal and airport hubs to allow Symons Clark Logistics to provide solutions including wharf cartage, container transport, warehousing, packing and unpacking, heavy haulage, national bulk haulage and project and mining logistics services to customers throughout SA and beyond.

Symons Clark Logistics has most recently continued its commitment to integrated logistics by forming a partnership with Aurizon. The fleet will service BHP’s Copper SA demand as the network moves to an intermodal solution.

“We have a very unique opportunity to be involved with the operations of BHP and Aurizon in SA’s biggest single logistics supply chain,” says Symons Clark Logistics CEO, Jason Clark. “It’s a generational transformation from road to intermodal.

“This new opportunity sees our businesses servicing the logistics requirements of BHP’s SA operations across three key mines in the state – Carrapateena, Olympic Dam and Prominent Hill.

“Aurizon transports material and equipment via rail from Adelaide to Pimba. That’s where the rail network stops and where we come in.”

Symons Clark Logistics has been commissioned to continue this supply chain by transporting mining support materials such as cement, sand and sulphur from the end of the rail line to the three aforementioned mine sites. In order to ensure ultimate safety and efficiency, an investment in an array of custom skel trailers built under Performance-Based Standards (PBS) was required.

“We needed custom skel trailers that would be durable enough to traverse the outback roads which run out to the Carrapateena and Prominent Hill mines,” says Symons Clark Logistics General Manager of Regional Mining, Josh Hofmaier. “But we also needed these trailers to support high payloads at the same time. So, we started moving towards a PBS design that was a little more unique.”

This brought the fleet to Bruce Rock Engineering (BRE) for an order which will see a total of 140 units built and delivered by the end of the contract. The ongoing design process, supported by BRE’s in-house engineering team, has been extremely collaborative to ensure all of Symons Clark Logistics’ requirements are fully met.

“We’re having weekly meetings with BRE to discuss the trailers in our order,” Josh explains. “We talk about what additional design tweaks we can make, stress-testing and other relevant diagnostic reports.

“We’re working towards some pretty tight deadlines, but we’ve been able to utilise BRE’s impressive manufacturing capacity at its Forrestfield and Bruce Rock facilities in Western Australia. BRE has done an excellent job of prioritising what we need in a very short timeframe.”

The results speak for themselves. Symons Clark Logistics recently took delivery of its first batch of 26 PBS and Dangerous Goods (DG) compliant custom skel trailers which included a combination of five super quad road trains, six super A-triples and 15 A-triple drop decks. According to Josh, these units have already made the BHP and Aurizon supply chain contract extremely efficient.

“These combinations are highly efficient and can move significant weight,” he says.

Gross Combination Mass (GCM) ratings of 187 tonnes allow the quad road trains to move freight such as copper concentrate, cement and other products to BHP’s mining sites with ease. This is also applicable to the super A-triples and A-triple drop decks which boast 142-tonne and 130-tonne GCMs respectively.

These capacities are also bolstered by extremely low tare weights throughout all of the trailers. Josh says extensive testing was required to achieve these specs.

“Keeping the height of the trailers down to cater for taller container heights and maintaining the structural integrity of the trailers was key,” he explains. “We also wanted to make sure that the trailers could be hooked up to bogey-drive and tri-drive prime movers for full flexibility within the supply chain.”

Symons Clark Logistics’ operations also required certain access benefits. These were delivered by BRE via PBS in a significant way.

“PBS has given us much greater flexibility with getting units of different lengths into certain locations,” Josh says. “We needed to meet more requirements to achieve this, but it’s made our combinations on the road much safer.

“Greater access is particularly important to us. We want our trailers to be flexible to the point where we can be short enough to travel around Adelaide through Port Adelaide and load at various supplier locations. So, a lot of work was involved to get them right.”

The single drop deck skels also went through various iterations to ensure maximum performance. Built with lower deck heights than the super triples and quads while maintaining a similar strength, they can be connected with tri-axle dollies in a gooseneck configuration to maintain stability when transiting in larger combinations.

“We ended up working through 11 versions of the drop decks in the span of two weeks,” Josh says. “We needed to get the payloads for the container weight correct on every trailer to reduce the risk of lighter and heavier containers on the trailer combinations.

“Standard drop decks will typically only offer a maximum container weight of 28.5 tonnes. We didn’t want to have any restrictions, so we used a spread-axle setup on the front which gave us a higher payload.

“The trailers are DG compliant too, which is highly unique in the industry.”

Symons Clark Logistics is now experiencing increased productivity by being able to move a variety of heavy freight across both rough mining terrain and the extensive PBS road network.

“Our trailers have been going non-stop since the contract started in October, and we haven’t found anything wrong with them,” Josh says. “The different GCM and payload figures provide versatility in what we can move which gets the job done faster.”

These capabilities have become a point of pride for the logistics operator’s team.

“Our drivers and workers are proud to be operating such solid products,” Josh adds. “It has made the start of the operation a lot easier than it could have been.

“We haven’t had to worry about any mechanical issues, and coming from BRE, we’re not surprised. We’re incredibly proud to have BRE as a partner and look forward to doing more business with them in the future. The experience has been fantastic.”