March 2016

UK weighing technology experts, Vehicle Weighing Solutions Ltd (VWS) are returning for the fourth year running to The Commercial Vehicle Show, which takes place at the NEC in Birmingham on 26-28 April, to launch a new innovative vehicle tow hitch weighing device and demonstrate their existing market leading range of products.

VWS will be co-demonstrating their latest development, the Tow Hitch Safety Loading System, with neighbouring exhibitor Hope Technical Developments. The companies have joined together to create an all-in-one van and tow overloading protection system. It uses the same in-cab indicator display so drivers can access both sets of weigh data easily. The data can either be stored or exported to most telemetry systems. A VWS transit demo van fitted with VOPS2 and the Tow Hitch system, and standing on one of VWS APOLLO weigh pads, will be stationed between both stands.

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Julian Glasspole, Managing Director, VWS said: “There are serious health and safety issues with tow hooks being overloaded forcing the rear axle down and pushing the front wheels up, which seriously impairs braking ability. There are also issues when there is too little weight on the hook, making the rear axle lift and causing vehicles to jack knife. Our combined system means that drivers can check if a hook has been loaded correctly and at the same time check that the vehicle isn’t overloaded.”

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Also featuring on the VWS stand this year is VWS PurGo, a software package designed specifically for waste and recycling operators to help streamline their operations, pinpoint heavy bins and identify missed revenue.

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Julian continued: “We created VWS PurGo to offer waste companies a user friendly, bespoke system designed just for them. It works in harmony with our ENVIROWEIGH bin-weighing system, taking the weights data directly and analysing the figures to produce accurate billing. VWS PurGo is a paperless system that uses handheld PDA’s with built in Sat Nav to assist drivers and enable geographical tracking of every vehicle and container.”

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An increasing number of operators are switching to VWS PurGo with remarkable results.

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Harvey Mills, Director and Co-Founder Forge Recycling commented: “It’s still early days but early indications suggest we were missing significant amounts in revenue, possibly into the thousands per week, on unidentified heavy bins. We have also been able to identify the customers that we have been servicing at a loss. This new software, combined with highly accurate bin-weighing systems, means our business can run more profitably and we can make sure that customers with lighter loads are being charged fairly and not subsidising those customers with very heavy bins. We can also target customers with heavy bins and offer options to keep their costs down, such as a separate food and glass waste collection.”

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Visitors to the show will also be able to find out more about VWS’ full range of industry leading weighing technologies. The weights and measures approved dynamic ENVIROWEIGH bin-weighing system is accurate to within 0.2% and is ideal for recycling schemes and pinpointing excessive users. The Apollo range of axle weighbridges offers slow speed and portable weighing solutions for fleet operators, such as the PT300 portable wheel weigh pad that has a capacity of 2,500kg – 12,000 kg per pad and an accuracy of +/- 1%. The new and improved VOPS2 Van Overload Protection System from VWS is not only more accurate than its predecessor but also comes with an in-cab indicator display giving drivers clear front and rear, net and gross axle weights.