Vale Steve Lincoln

In-depth

19 July

8. Steve Lincoln with his side tipper B-double.JPG

We were saddened on the weekend to learn of the passing of Steve Lincoln, founder of Lincoln Side Tipping Systems. Much more than the founder of the business, Steve was the inventor as well.

I ran a story on Steve last year and reprint it in part here for those who may have missed it

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7 Steve with his neat 2003, T950 'Tradition'..JPG

Steve was in the construction industry and had semi tippers. He always felt that there was an inherent problem with them as often they would be on uneven ground which gave them the propensity for tipping themselves, as well as their load.

One day Steve was driving along and in front of him was a Skel hauling containers. He thought to himself, ‘I could build a side tipper using one of those Skel’s.’

And that is exactly what Steve Lincoln did. Not only did he make it happen, but had the first one on the road in a mere 12 months. Steve was not an engineer, but as he said when interviewed a couple of years ago, “I’m just a tinkerer.”

**Steve has hooked back up with Ian Lee on the Highway in the sky**

Leaving school Steve followed his father into trucking – specifically earthmoving.

“I’d decided that I was going to go down the side tipper path and looked at them in America, but it was a bit of a job getting one out here. So I’m coming home one day cruising along and a truck goes past with a Skel on the back. I looked at it and where the container sits and I thought, ‘I know what I can do,’ and I did.

“I went to the auctions and bought an air bag tri-axle Skel and took it back to the shed. The boy’s said, ‘What are we doing with that?’ and I replied we’re going to build a side tipper.

“They asked, ‘How?’ and I said that I didn’t know but we’d work it out along the way.”

And work it out he did. He could tip the trays to the right, the left or both ways at the same time – all from the comfort of the truck cab. The tippers have airlocks which lock one side down and that’s the side it tips to. There’s no putting pins in or out of anything with the whole system air operated.

The system also incorporates a double row ball race that locks onto the trailer, so that when tipping the trailer chassis doesn’t lift up off the fifth wheel and it spreads a weight of what’s going on over the whole turntable instead of pulling up on the kingpin and pushing down on one side.

“These are mainly for carting heavy loads such as rock and gravel,” said Steve. “They don’t have the volume of the big aluminium trailers, but rock is heavy so you don’t need the volume. With rocks, the traditional way with a normal tipper is that you have to get out and swing a tailgate to get them off. With these you don’t. You just wheel her up, jack-knife it, tip out and drive off in about 25 seconds. With the old truck and dog you would be there for anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes. Time is money. “By jack-knifing the truck it means that when you pull away, the trailer won’t be pulled into the load should any rocks of rolled underneath. There have been people hurt with the tailgate system but not with this. With this you don’t even get out of the truck. There’s no clambering around in the mud either.”

The trailers gross 64.5 ton and are made of super hardened material. Certainly the ones on show, which have had plenty of use, looked brand new. The manufacturing workmanship on them really is something to behold. Every part, from the trailers themselves to the air rams to the plumbing is top notch – it could be fairly described as a thing of beauty.

From start up, around six years ago to the time of this interview, Lincoln Side Tipping Systems had 18 side-tippers on the road. Not content with converting Skels to side tippers, Steve designed his product so that it is easily converted back to a Skel, diversification of his product being the name of his game.

Steve Lincoln passed away at age 69. Rest in Peace.