State-Of-The-Art Trucking at Oxford Exhibition Services

Ensuring that the paintings and objects that come into our care are delivered in exactly the same condition that we received them demands a specialist fleet of trucks tailor made for the job. As well as needing to safely transport these sensitive items around Europe by road, it is important that the trucks are comfortable so that the crew and couriers are still fresh when they unload their cargo at the end of a journey. All of the Oxford Exhibition Services vehicles have been designed with these criteria in mind.

Firstly, the trucks all have the necessary fine art handling and security equipment to comply with conservation and UK Government Indemnity requirements, i.e additional secure locks, fixed mobile phones, fire fighting equipment, temperature and humidity control and air suspension. We also have installed remote satellite tracking systems, enabling us and our customers to securely follow deliveries on-line 24 hours a day. The system also monitors and records door and alarm system activations. In addition, all the trucks are very discrete and are plain white so they don’t draw attention to the nature of their loads.

In the past eighteen months, we have acquired four new specialist trucks. We have named them after some of the UK motorways that they travel on, hence M18, M20, M30 and M60. The smallest of the trucks, M60 is an LPG powered 3.5 tonnes box van, meaning it can be driven around city Congestion Zones while not significantly adding to carbon emissions. It is used primarily for moving smaller consignments around London and other city centres, although it is still comfortable enough to accommodate a courier and be used for longer journeys.

M20 is also a 3.5 tonnes vehicle but is a very discrete long wheelbase panel van with an extra-high roof. It has a high-volume load capacity and is easy to manoeuvre making it ideal for access to city centres. As it has no tail lift, it is particularly suited to hand-carried objects. M20 has space in its cab for a courier.

At 16 tonnes, M18 and M30 are the biggest lorries in the fleet and are equipped with state of the art equipment including a CCTV system linked to a hard disk recorder in the cab. As well as storing video footage of journeys, this also records other information such as the speed and position of the trucks at any one time – much like a black box flight recorder. The vehicles have five cameras each - four pointing outside and one pointing inside, to the load compartment. We can if requested give our clients remote access to the CCTV system to enable them to view the cameras live from their office.

Both M18 and M30 can accommodate up to seven people in comfort; they have plenty of legroom, very comfortable seats, an air-conditioned cab and onboard wireless internet access. The key difference between the two vehicles is that M30, being the taller of the two vehicles, has capacity for transporting very tall sculptures and large paintings and is we believe the tallest specialist fine art truck in the country.

At the recent UKRG courier training event at Harewood House, registrars were able to get guided tours of one of the new vehicles. OES technicians and project managers were running a session for couriers which included various aspects of the responsibilities of couriers with regard to road transport including vehicle security, temperature and humidity control and securing loads.

If this article has whetted your appetite, we will be delighted to show you around. If you would like to make an appointment to view our vehicles or need any further information please contact Michael Festenstein.