The Builder’s Warehouse Special ‘Rocker Bin’ Vehicle 

Builder’s Warehouse, a major client of the Value Group, were looking for a cost-effective and more efficient way to offload their aggregate trucks. Up until Value’s service delivery intervention, trucks were being offloaded by hand – a time consuming, expensive and labour intensive process. Builder’s Warehouse weren’t keen on buying a tipper truck vehicle because they are expensive to purchase and maintain, so they looked to Value to help them reduce costs. 

Value Group’s Wikus Botha had a look at a concept where you have an airbag that is used to lift the truck’s bin. The airbag is inflated when the truck’s exhaust fumes are directed inside it. Although this was a good solution it was not passed because it would have eventually damaged the engine by using the exhaust fumes.

We decided that we needed a solution where the bin could be removed so that we could utilize the vehicle for normal deliveries as well. Value engineers even spent a week in England visiting various logistics companies but we did not see anything innovative in terms of what we needed.

Finally Trevor Van Rensburg showed Wikus a picture of a Rocker Bin that was mounted on a small trailer that is pulled behind a bakkie - something similar to what is used in warehouses for an industrial-sized dustbin (think ‘skip’). A plan was drawn up illustrating how this concept could be adapted to the needs of the Value Group and Builder’s Warehouse.

Value met with the same engineer that created the ‘Rocker Bin’ and Wikus explained that his design needed to be altered so that there could be wheels on the bin. Trevor and Wikus then sat together and planned the design of the body conversion of the vehicle to be able to carry the Rocker Bins.

Firstly, Trevor used railings on top of the vehicle for testing and Wikus proposed that the rails are sunk into the load-body. This design made it possible to have the bins on the vehicle and if they needed to be removed from the vehicle, the vehicle could continue to carry normal loads without hindering the operation – just like your average flatbed truck.

Currently it costs the customer just over the R2000 per vehicle per month as opposed to a tipper truck vehicle of R30000 per month. In Cape Town we managed to reduce the fleet from 66 vehicles to 31 owing to the Rocker Bins. These bins are very well built and will last a long time – no maintenance costs.