Holland talks straight

When you make your living going from Point A to Point B in as straight a line as possible, it only makes sense that vehicle alignment is a priority. A truck that’s sidling down the highway will handle poorly and suffer in fuel economy and tire mileage. Yet you see them all the time.

On a properly aligned vehicle, all the axles should be perpendicular to the frame and parallel to each other, and all the wheels should track the front wheels. When your trailer axles are out of parallel, you can feel the vehicle “wandering” behind you and you’re constantly making steering corrections to keep the combination straight. You end up scraping your tires sideways a few feet for every mile of operation. Not good.

The problem would be a lot less common if axles were easier to align, says Pat McGurk, director of the trailer suspension systems group at Holland. To that end, Holland has developed a 40,000-pound tandem trailer air suspension and slider, the CB400. It has a feature called Swing Align, which lets you bring your axles into parallel with the turn of an adjustment nut. The nut turns a screw that’s threaded through a bushing connected to each trailing arm, gently and directly shifting the arm fore or aft using the same roll-thread screw technology found on Holland’s landing gear products. Swing Align requires no special tools or disassembly during the realignment process, just 250 foot-pounds of torque on your impact wrench (and an accurate measurement so you know when your axles are properly lined up).

Available to every trailer OEM in North America starting this spring, the CB400 is an on-highway suspension with two axles at a 49-inch spread. Ride heights range from 15.5 to 18 inches and the beam centres are 36 or 42 inches.

The CB400 incorporates casting technology adopted from Holland’s fifth wheel business to take weight out of the trailing arm without compromising strength. It also has Holland’s Qwik Release pin pull, a nifty device that allows a single person to reposition the slider with minimal effort.

Details are available at
www.thehollandgroupinc.com,
toll-free at 1-888/396-6501, or at
Holland Hitch of Canada, 519/537-3494.