Auto Trailer Unloader

We can now unveil our latest innovation, which reduces the average time it takes to unload an HGV trailer from three-and-a-half hours to just six minutes - an improvement of 97%.

Our Automatic Trailer Unloader was fully designed and engineered in just nine months by Royal Mail’s in-house Engineering Team, which invents bespoke solutions to help improve efficiency across the business.

Click here to watch it in action.

Previously, unloading loose-load trailers – which hold up to 8,000 parcels – could only be done manually.

This new technology vastly speeds up the process by fitting trailers with conveyor belts, providing a seamless connection to the parcel sorting systems inside the Hub, which process around 800,000 parcels a day at speeds of 40,000 parcels per hour.

The first Automatic Trailer Unloader is now live at our North West Super Hub in Warrington and a second will be rolled out to the Midlands Super Hub in Daventry in the coming months. They will be available to some of our large account customers, as part of Royal Mail’s strategy to roll out more automation to boost efficiency and meet growing demand for next-day deliveries.

Neil Chaplain, Engineering and Process Design Director, said: ‘Our new Automatic Trailer Unloader dramatically decreases the processing time for loose-load trailers by removing one of the few manual steps at our hubs.

‘There is no technology on the market that solves this issue in a way that fully satisfies our needs, so our team of engineers designed our own solution. It is a fantastic opportunity for our large account customers, enabling consumers to order even later in the day for next-day delivery.’

Andy Harris, Head of Design Engineering, adds: ‘Ultimately it automates the process straight into the existing APSS system. So it takes the unload time down from a current time manually of three-and-a-half hours to down to under six minutes.

‘The benefit is much faster processing once we get it here to the North West Super Hub. It also presents us with the opportunity as a business to collect from our customers two-and-a-half hours later, which is a fantastic opportunity for the business but also for our customers to present work into our network later on in the day.’

Read more about our Engineering team’s innovations in the latest issue of Courier. Click here to catch up and head to pages 32-33.