Horsebox build.....our story!

[Farmer Chalk]

Big day tomorrow! Daughter is meeting a company to finalise a few details which may see a dramatic change in our colour scheme.....
it's not over til the fat lady sings so fingers crossed everyone!

It's fairly noticeable at present....you won't miss it if it comes off!

 

[blackjack]

Hi Farmer Chalk
I've loved you blog and I'm about to embark on my own self build!!!! Slightly scared, but your posts are really helpful. Unfortunately your photos can't be accessed anymore???? Is there anyway they can be seen somewhere?

 

[Farmer Chalk]

Hi Farmer Chalk
I've loved you blog and I'm about to embark on my own self build!!!! Slightly scared, but your posts are really helpful. Unfortunately your photos can't be accessed anymore???? Is there anyway they can be seen somewhere?

Brilliant news and hold the faith....it's brilliant fun and the people on here are brilliant...I have just checked and I can see the photos still from my first threads.... is it because you are not logged in?
Some forums withold permissions to view images unless you are fully logged in.....I sometimes have difficulties logging in on iPads and phones ...

Thread update.... the fat lady almost sings.... some great news forthcoming but we have had to get a few ducks in a line before the news can be released....

But as stated earlier you certainly won't miss this truck coming down the road shortly...we have been engaged with a firm who hope to support a number of young riders....

 

[Farmer Chalk]

Well..... I told you you wouldn't miss it!

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[Dubsie]

Well you won't miss that coming! Is it the only one in that livery? Will know to say 'Hello' if I see you.

 

[Beausmate]

So... Has it been tagged then?

 

[Darbs]

Excellent, that's really eye catching exactly as sponsorship should be.

I have been involved in running sponsored commercial cycling teams for many years, and it never ceases to amaze me how poor some team vehicles and clothing are in actually promoting their sponsor... yours is first class!

 

[meesha]

Love it

 

[Farmer Chalk]

Thanks everyone for your great comments.... I'm glad people like it and it's certainly attention grabbing being as loud as it is!

Quite amusing watching my girls working with the company and their graphic designer... getting the business to understand the image of a horses head in extreme rollkur whilst pretty and a great graphic would be frowned upon hugely by you horsey people and send the wrong message! The number of drawings that were rejected for the right reasons...

Actually I'm incredibly proud of my young daughter... whilst I was rolling around underneath the lorry building it she was busy researching sponsors and researching issues facing the equine world... one of the biggest issues that was being faced locally was the huge numbers of tack thefts that have been occurring around the Country... every day we seem to be sending social media posts about more kit and saddles being stolen....

So she started challenging Datatag to engage with the horsey world.. whilst they are a household name if you want to protect a motorbike, a jet ski, a quad bike, or a JCB or John Deere they are almost unknowns in the equine world... so with perseverance she kept requesting an audience with the owner and did a stunning presentation as to why Datatag needed to concentrate more in our market....

The rest is now history but there will be more news over the coming months and hopefully exciting times as Datatag become more and more involved...

A very proud Dad whose so pleased that all her hard work is coming to fruition....!!

So an open invite to all you fantastic people who have helped with advice and encouragement over the past year with the build...thank you so much for your time and if you see us on the road give us a toot!!

if you're at the same event come by for a cup of tea or glass of Pinot!
Thanks again! You're the best!

 

[Bernster]

Fantastic, clever daughter indeed!

 

[Loubidy]

Graphics look fantastic! Certainly won't miss that in the lorry park!

Curious however as now you are "advertising" does this mean you require an in date CPC?

 

[Farmer Chalk]

Good question and one that I researched at length.... the short answer is no!
The vehicle is not being used for hire or reward or the carriage of goods, it is not a primary business and my daughter's income is negliable...

I wrote to the Traffic Commissioner highlighting all the circumstances and he /she agreed with me... I have a copy of the email stating that we do not need an operators licence or CPC as a result! Spookily I have a copy to hand over to any over zealous VOSA official in the cab for them to view at roadside...

You would require one if you are transporting as a business, or are charging monies for transportation , or horses are your business, I.e. your primary source of income....We are deemed as amateur competitors..whose prize money is minimal.... ( you can say that again)!

 

[rosiesowner]

Incredible! And amazing work by your daughter, getting out there and finding a sponsor. Best wishes! Hopefully you will let us know of any more further successes!

 

[Farmer Chalk]

Thanks for the lovely comments!

Alas it appears that this thread has been too successful as I have just had the dreaded notification from photobucket similar to Fiona's post... http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?750466-Ahhh-my-photobucket-horsy-pics-(/page7.

Photobucket are demanding $399 for me to continue to allow photos to be hosted which is exhorbitant... and alas means shortly it appears they are going to freeze all the photos in this thread...

I hope the thread has been an inspiration to others that building a lorry is'nt that bad and can actually be great fun... if anyone wants advice or some of the photos then pm me and I would gladly assist. Dependant on demand I will lift the photos from photobucket and replace with another hosting company but I don't know whether the forum will allow me to re edit such old posts...

Thanks all for your support! In the meantime anyone contemplating a photobucket account don't !!!

 

[FfionWinnie]

It would probably be quicker and easier to set up a FB business account, whack them on there and post the link.

 

[kamili]

Wow it looks amazing, been following this thread with much interest. I love how enterprising your daughter is too.

I'm sure you will have many years of brilliant fun with it, and may it bring you luck at every competition you go to!

Pity about the pictures, what a pain. The Facebook page idea is great too though!

 

[GeeBee45]

You may be able to help with this query then?

Ours is a 12 tonner... it is a 2007 chassis so fitted with a digi tachometer. We both use chip tachometer cards and comply with driver hours regs.... we do not run commercially but purely for transporting our own horses...
Do we still need to download our data? At present we don't as I didn't think we have had to.... do we need to print off a daily trip still or can Vosa do this?

As a second question what if any is the benefit of changing the tax class to private HGV? The cost of the full tax for this vehicle is currently only £200 per annum..

Firstly a big apology to Farmer Chalk for taking so long to spot I'd been asked a couple of questions. Note to self.....must stop working and spend more time on forums, not sure the bank manager would appreciate that though.

To deal with the Tachograph question first. It doesn't matter whether you use the horsebox for purely 'non commercial transport' or not. Once you come under the EU drivers hours rules you must use the Tacho and must follow ALL the rules that cover the use of that Tacho. Data must be downloaded from both the driver cards and the Vehicle Unit (Tacho) and stored for 12 months. Downloaded data files must be provided to DVSA (or Police) if they request them. There is absolutely no requirement to do a printout at the end of each vehicle use as the data is stored on the card and in the VU. The only times that printouts are required are; if DVSA or Police ask for one, you need to record why you have gone outside EU rules to deal with 'unforeseen circumstances,' or the card is; lost, stolen, damaged or malfunctioning. Doing printouts is NOT a substitute for downloading and storing data.

You will need a Company Card from DVLA and a downloading tool, personally I like the Lisle Design stuff. You may need to buy a smart card reader, but then you'll need some software to create the card downloads so you may be better off, financially, going for something like the Lisle Digidown, can download both the VU and any driver card in it. The law requires operators of vehicles to analyse the data to ensure there are no breaches of the relevant drivers hours. In all honesty if you are confident you can comply with the Regs then you can probably avoid getting any analysis software. What happens to this when we leave the EU? I cannot answer the question, not sure anyone could. But, my thought is we'll probably keep the rules as they are until Parliament gets around to changing stuff, to be honest they have much bigger issues to sort out before getting around to transport stuff.

Are you going to get bothered by DVSA with all this? Well, that is a multi million pound question. There appear to be fewer road checks active at the moment, particularly at weekends. But let's be honest, the new graphics on the box look fantastic but they will certainly grab the stopping officers attention. Once they have determined that the use is non commercial the switched on examiner will notice that the MAM is over 7.5 tonnes and will be looking for compliance with Tacho rules. If they download the VU they can see if the data memory has been downloaded and when. Granted the court cases to date have all been commercial operators, but you don't want to be the first 'non commercial' user as the fines can be very large if the Magistrates are having a bad day.

If you want to read the legislation is Statutory Instrument 2008/198 'The Passenger and Goods Vehicles (Recording Equipment) (Downloading and Retention of Data) Regulations 2008' it has been amended last year to change the download period for VU's to at least every 90 days (used to be 56).

On the tax matter; the only thing that changing the tax status would do is save a few pounds a year. The current Class 10 rate for Private Heavy Goods is £165 per annum, which you could do as two six month payments (£90.75) or 12 monthly instalments of £14.44. The monthly direct debit option is not available to vehicle taxed in Class 01 HGV.

If you want any further help on the downloading bit drop me a PM, I might even have some kit around that can help.

 

[Farmer Chalk]

Gee Bee,

Many many thanks for your reply, and apologies for the very late response. It's been a very busy summer and things are only just calming down so haven't been on here for a while. Some great info and we need to consider the options moving forward.

I would like to think DVSA will see sense on this. I can get the data downloaded via the company I work for who operate a large number of HGV's.

Update for all now the lorry has been out for a couple of years now... the biggest issue of owning an HGV is the tachometer rules which constraint (quite rightfully) journey times. The second is the annual MOT which unlike a car needs to be booked months in advance! So you need to be on top of your game with regards to maintenance.

As for running.. it's been brilliant.... we have travelled several thousand miles on the circuit this year. Several trips to the Midlands and East Anglia. The longest trip was to the BYRDS Nationals in Scotland... this trip was through the night using two drivers to minimise stoppage timings and reduce the time the horses were kept on board...

We even took our horses away for Xmas! Always an issue going away for any time with trying to arrange suitable horse carers.. now no need! Took them with us!

Stayed at my sisters farm and minimised our nuisance factor with lack of bedrooms for the whole family by taking ours with us. Perfect.. had a great lie in on Xmas day and the girls could all go out for a stunning ride on Xmas and Boxing Day mornings!

So overall truck has been brilliant... had to do a couple of minor repairs..couple of the switches for the under lockers were poor quality and sourced some decent ones from Amazon.. swapped out some of the zinc plated screws used for some of the external fittings for stainless steels ones which will survive the winter road salt.

The water heater and shower have proved to be brilliant and allows the ability to stay away for 3-5 days in perfect comfort. The LED lighting especially in the horse area has also been excellent. Dimming the lights down and putting using a dark blue violet colour was the perfect way for the horses to travel through the night just emitting enough light so they could see what they were doing and allowed them to doze off quite nicely. Despite being on the lorry for many hours they arrived fresh and bright and certainly not as stiff as expected.

Any changes I would make?? I suppose the only thing I would do if I was making another would be to find a cab chassis that had air conditioning in the cab.... our horses travel in better comfort than us.. they have air con but we don't...but isn't that how it should be??

 

[blackjack]

Thanks everyone for your great comments.... I'm glad people like it and it's certainly attention grabbing being as loud as it is!

Quite amusing watching my girls working with the company and their graphic designer... getting the business to understand the image of a horses head in extreme rollkur whilst pretty and a great graphic would be frowned upon hugely by you horsey people and send the wrong message! The number of drawings that were rejected for the right reasons...

Actually I'm incredibly proud of my young daughter... whilst I was rolling around underneath the lorry building it she was busy researching sponsors and researching issues facing the equine world... one of the biggest issues that was being faced locally was the huge numbers of tack thefts that have been occurring around the Country... every day we seem to be sending social media posts about more kit and saddles being stolen....

So she started challenging Datatag to engage with the horsey world.. whilst they are a household name if you want to protect a motorbike, a jet ski, a quad bike, or a JCB or John Deere they are almost unknowns in the equine world... so with perseverance she kept requesting an audience with the owner and did a stunning presentation as to why Datatag needed to concentrate more in our market....

The rest is now history but there will be more news over the coming months and hopefully exciting times as Datatag become more and more involved...

A very proud Dad whose so pleased that all her hard work is coming to fruition....!!

So an open invite to all you fantastic people who have helped with advice and encouragement over the past year with the build...thank you so much for your time and if you see us on the road give us a toot!!

if you're at the same event come by for a cup of tea or glass of Pinot!
Thanks again! You're the best!

This is probably quite cheeky of me, but I'm also looking to ask a company to advertise on my lorry and wondered how much I should ask for advertising on it?? A one off payment, or an annual payment?? I'm not sure you want to divulge this information, but I have no idea where I should start from??

 

[Farmer Chalk]

This is probably quite cheeky of me, but I'm also looking to ask a company to advertise on my lorry and wondered how much I should ask for advertising on it?? A one off payment, or an annual payment?? I'm not sure you want to divulge this information, but I have no idea where I should start from??

The first thing you need to consider is why a company would want to spend its hard earned cash in the first place.. what value would you bring the company and how would they get a return on its investment.... I.e. if you’re a superstar in your chosen field then the added celebrity bonus that brings the company with its association with you....e.g Land Rover sponsorship with Zara, Jeep sponsorship with William etc.etc...

Unfortunately we didn’t have that ... so you can’t be charging hundreds of thousands of pounds...

Next stop down then for us...he he ...
Then you have to work out how commercially they will gain either extra advertising space and be seen in the right circles to improve their brand image or gain considerable extra sales....

So with us we still don’t fully fit that criteria... what they bought into was almost a young apprentice, a girl who would showcase their products and assist at a variety of additional events...

So over the next year you will see the lorry appearing at a number of events including Horsewatch events, Crimestopper events and Farmers and Agriculture meets. Great for us as hopefully it will lead into a career for our daughter as well working with the Datatag events team..

In context what the company will buy into is your enthusiasm to push their brand, and someone who is passionate about their product.

It’s like a job interview... i’m Sure there are hundreds of suitably qualified people out there but the one who gets the job is the one whose done their homework and really wants that job.


In total answer without mentioning figures we agreed a deal over a three year period ( the cost of graphics and subsequent application is near to £2k alone) which would allow a period of time that was deemed worthy...

The sponsorship cannot be deemed excessive either because that then brings in the realms of business use, operators licensing etc..

Hence they bought into a complete package whereby they were not just getting stickers on the side of a lorry....

You have to decide the figure you think you are worth and how you can bring that value back into the company you’re talking to!
Good luck and believe in yourself! You know you’re worth it!

 

[HAPPY DAZE]

Do you need to use the Tacho Rules on a 7.5T, thank's

 

[Farmer Chalk]

If it’s for personal use then no! If you are transporting as a business or for payment then yes!

As ours is a 12tonner we always need to use a tachometer. There is no exemption personal use or not.

This is a great reference guide.

http://www.bhs.org.uk/~/media/bhs/files/pdf-documents/vosa-horsebox-guide.ashx

 

[HAPPY DAZE]

Top Man thank you.

 

[Farmer Chalk]

Been a busy year! Done a few thousand miles in the old girl this year... Kent to Scotland for the BYRDS National Championships was the longest trip... lorry performed effortlessly and horses travelled perfectly in an overnight journey..

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Will give further update after testing my photobucket link!

Regards to all!

 

[Beausmate]

Somewhere on here is a thread with 'how to get around photobucket' instructions. It is fairly recent, so probably still works.

Edit: Found it http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/foru...-photos-again-for-free)&highlight=photobucket

 

[tallyho!]

Been a busy year! Done a few thousand miles in the old girl this year... Kent to Scotland for the BYRDS National Championships was the longest trip... lorry performed effortlessly and horses travelled perfectly in an overnight journey..

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Will give further update after testing my photobucket link!

Regards to all!

Very smart... still not spotted you on the motorways yet on my travels

 

[VRIN]

Wow! Thats awesome!

 

[Farmer Chalk]

Thanks Beausmate!

Yes this year the lorry continues to be put in good service...just giving you my regular update of issues faced by running an HGV horsebox..

Biggest frustration is keeping up with drivers hours...and driver rest periods as dictated by the good old EU!

No problem at all if you are doing short local journeys but the longer trips need a bit of planning and possibly a second driver...

But the benefits of carrying the extra weight also helps....we literally take the kitchen sink with us to events!

Updates to the lorry have been slow... but continuous...

Will need to adapt the locker doors..the outer edges of them have a nylon brush type strips fitted to them to stop dirt and dust ingress into the lockers...

Great until you have a frosty day! Aaaaaaaarrrrggggghhhhhh! What happens is the brush material holds the water... which then freezes solid...the lockers are impossible to open which means you can’t load or unload the lorry!
You have to boil the kettle and attempt to pour the contents down the sides of the lockers to de ice them before you can go anywhere!

Become paranoid about keeping hold of the lorry now i’ve spent so many hours under it.. Next photo shows just how much much wiring goes into HGV wiring and fitted a super duper alarm system to protect it whilst it’s out and about... Designed the system to secure all the lockers and living area whilst the back doors and rear of the horsebox is open at shows!

Always a nightmare...back of the lorry is down, we are out at the event and otherwise engaged...now with one touch of the key fob we can zone off and lock the rest of the lorry to lock and alarm the living area, cab and lockers....
Same at night we can secure all the perimeter doors and lockers but not set off the alarm whilst moving around inside...

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Just a bit of wiring!

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Little and large! Great sponsor and you get some nice kit! Datatag sponsored the BYRDS Southern team this year and the girls all had great gilets to parade around with ...

Even the horse got a nice coat!

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[tootsietoo]

Thank you so much for this thread, it's kept me quiet for the last few evenings and I've emailed it to the husband too! We're just about to start a build on a 12 tonne chassis, which will need to carry 3 horses (2 daughters + me, poor DH!) and will be stalled for 4 so we have a bit of space and can take a friend if necessary plus we want a living with 3 beds, so one above a shower room, to allow 4 of us to sleep comfortably. We're not going to be doing any of it ourselves like you have, we do not have those skills! But I am planning it down to the last millimetre, and so of course I have a few questions, and I wonder if you can help me with some of them?

Do you make use of the genny very much? Our builder thinks up to 4 leisure batteries will be fine for what we need
Do you use the aircon much? I really like the idea of it, but builder has great belief in his vents and thinks that will be fine. I'd love aircon in the cab too - you said up thread that you need to buy a cab with it already installed - is it possible to retrofit it?
Have you got a plan of your layout, horizontal and vertical? Would love to see it!
Have you ever towed a racing car with it? My DH might do the same, and I wondered if it's feasible. Would you need a cat CE licence to do this (to tow a trailer over 750kg)? When I looked at the training info from our local driver training company, it said the training for cat CE is on an artic with curtainsider trailer! Which is not really what we had in mind!
Do you find your 240l water tank is enough for a long trip away - showers for all, including horses?

I love your internal lighting - made me realise that I need to put a lot of thought into what lighting I want where.

Thank you kindly in advance! I will certainly say thank you in person if I ever spot your very visible lorry!

 

[turnbuckle]

Trailer (up to 12T total) is C1E, not CE.

Not all training firms will offer it. You will also be into tacho.

Might be worth doing sheep/lamb thing and taking the artic one? Fun skill to have.