Used Yard Spotter Florida - Tow tractors are a common piece of industrial equipment used in large buildings, arenas, warehouses, airports and manufacturing plants for moving loads horizontally. They go by different names including tow tugs and towing tractors. Tow tractors are responsible for moving multiple trailers in a train. Tow tractors can move aircraft into and outside of airport locations such as terminals and hangars.
All tow tractors use the concept of tractive effort to move loads. Tractive effort refers to the total amount of traction a vehicle deploys on the ground. Tractive effort says that the heavier the load, the more tractive effort is required. The tow tractor lifts a portion of the load during towing while ensuring the wheels on the load still remain on the ground. The hydraulic mast on the tow tractor is responsible for lifting the load. It produces downforce on the drive wheel underneath to increase the tractive effort. The traction created by this process enables the tow tractor to pull very large and heavy loads.
Types of Tow Tractors
Heavy-duty tow tractors and load carriers are two types of tow tractors.
Load Carriers
Industries such as e-commerce, manufacturing, and airport baggage and parcel systems must regularly move many individual and varying sized items to or from a single location. Tow tugs and load carriers easily transport single items that have been deposited on wheeled platforms and move them with ease.
Load carrier tow tractor models are categorized in the material handling equipment that covers cranes, forklifts and pallet jacks. These units only transport loads at ground level and do not lift or lower items from shelving or off the ground. In order to be ready for transport, items must be secured on a wheeled platform or already on wheels to use the tow tractor. Bogies, skates and trollies are other names for wheeled platforms. The tow tug is attached to the trolly similar to train cars being attached to a locomotive. Usually, the tow tug has a male-end steel coupling that couples to the female-end fixed to the front of the trolly. The trolly’s back portion has a male-end steel coupling that can be used to connect a variety of trollies to a single tug.
These machines can transport a variety of items in varying conditions. The availability of many different types of trollies also allows for greater customization in transporting items. Many trollies can be connected since they are compatible with one another. Different kinds of trollies can be maneuvered in a single train, creating flexible transport options.
An additional benefit of operating with load carrier tow tractors as opposed to forklifts is the unobstructed view offered by a tow tractor, increasing the safety of work areas. Additionally, load carrier tow tractors move their units in a forward-only way and this drastically decreases safety concerns associated with forklifts traveling in reverse. This is vital for safety-sensitive places including airports and manufacturing facilities.
Towing many items at once saves time and money compared to relying on forklifts to move single things. They are safe and easy to maneuver. A key benefit of these units is that typically, the operator doesn’t need a license. This is because the load is not lifted from the ground so it does not fall under the usual restrictions and licensing required of standard forklifts, cranes and other load lifting equipment.
There are three kinds of load carrier tow tractor units to choose from; pedestrian, stand-in and rider-seated.
Pedestrian Tow Tractors
A walk-behind model that can transport wheeled loads is called a pedestrian tow tractor. These machines may go by the names of electric hand tug, electric tugger, electric tug or tow tractor. These machines are simple to use, extremely maneuverable and very compact.
Stand-in Tow Tractors
Popular for industries that conduct order picking and horizontal transport for manufacturing, the stand-in tow tractors are the best design. These units deliver a secure driver platform and deliver a smaller footprint compared to the rider-seated models.
Rider-Seated Tow Tractors
Rider-seated tow tractors are similar to stand-in models except they offer a seated platform for the operator. These types of load carrier tow tractors are popular where loads are transported over longer distances, such as airport baggage systems where checked baggage is transported from the check-in counter at the front of an airport to the aircraft at the terminal, often a great distance from one another. Reducing rider fatigue, the rider-seated models deliver more efficiency.
Heavy Duty Tow Tractors
In the aviation industry, large passenger and cargo planes usually employ the concept of pushback. Pushing an aircraft back from the airport terminal without using the aircraft’s own power is the pushback concept. Pushback is achieved by employing pushback tugs or pushback tractors.
Pushback tugs feature a low-profile enabling them to travel under the aircraft’s nose for easy attachment. Enough ground friction is required to move the weighted aircraft, so these models need to be heavy themselves. A common tractor for moving large aircraft can weigh in up to fifty-four tons. Their driver’s cab has the ability to be lowered and raised for increased visibility during reversing.
While the vehicle is referred to as a pushback tug or pushback tow tractor, it is also used to tow aircraft in areas where taxiing the aircraft is not practical or safe, such as moving large aircraft in and out of maintenance hangars.
There are two subtypes of pushback tow tractors:
1. Conventional; and
2. Towbarless.
Conventional Pushback Tow Tractors
These units use a tow bar to attach the tug to the nose landing gear on the aircraft. The tow bar is fixed laterally at the nose landing gear, but may move slightly vertically for height adjustment. At the end that attaches to the tug, the tow bar may pivot freely laterally and vertically. Acting like a giant lever, the tow bar can rotate the nose landing gear. There are a towbar and precise tow fitting that acts as an adapter between the standard-sized tow pin and on the landing gear of the aircraft. Heavy towbars have their own wheels for big aircraft and can ride on these wheels when disconnected from planes. The wheels are attached to a hydraulic jacking mechanism which can lift the towbar to the correct height to mate to both the airplane and the tug, and once this is accomplished the same mechanism is used in reverse to raise the tow bar wheels from the ground during the pushback process. The towbar can be connected at the front or the rear of the tractor, depending on whether the aircraft will be pushed or pulled.
Towbarless Pushback Tow Tractors
Towbarless tractors, as their name suggests, don’t rely on a towbar. Instead, these machines scoop up the nose landing gear to lift it off of the ground so the tug can move the plane. This offers better control and higher speeds while eliminating the requirement of having a worker stationed in the cockpit to put the brakes on. Simplicity is the main advantage of the towbarless tugs since it is not necessary to maintain a variety of towbars. By connecting the tug directly to the aircraft's landing gear tug operators have better control and responsiveness when maneuvering.
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