Custom PTB system for Thai company Plan B Plus: Transporting goods over a slope whilst keeping them level

In 2017 the Thai company Plan B Plus offered PTB an interesting series of challenges; build two 10 ton pallet trucks, which can transport goods over steep slopes into cargo containers. The director of Plan B Plus visited PTB and saw a few operational PTB machines in action in Belgium and the Netherlands. After this enjoyable visit, the director put PTB to work. The two 10 ton pallet trucks are now in production for Plan B Plus, at PTB's facilities in Groningen.

Heavy goods in a level position

The 10 ton pallet trucks are designed to transport heavy pallets in a warehouse in Chonburi, a port city in the vicinity of Bangkok, Thailand. The warehouse, part of a terminal, mainly stores and distributes heavy goods. These have to be transported from the warehouse and loaded into containers. This has to be done by driving over a dock leveler, which often stands in an 11.5 degree angle. Driving over such a steep slope into a cargo container requires some serious power, yet the powerful machine also has to be relatively small. A regular high capacity forklift would be too massive for this job. To increase the challenge even further, Plan B Plus asked PTB to design a system which keeps the cargo level when driving over the slope. With this, our engineers went to work.

Safety on slopes

The engineering efforts have resulted in a compact pallet truck with two powerful electric motors. The cargo is carried by two broad forks with a width and length of relatively 380 en 1900 millimeters. The driver operates the truck with a tiller handle while standing on a platform behind the chassis. The platform is an incremental step to ensure safe and efficient operation of the truck. When a slope comes up, the o perator can activate the special mechanism to ensure the forks remain level. This custom system ensures safety as well as providing the option to position the cargo directly behind a slope. Normally a pallet cannot be placed directly behind a slope, since reversing the pallet truck or forklift would result in the forks tilting and touching the pallet. This is prevented by the custom leveling system of the PTB trucks.