Designs / Terminology
Roll containers also known as roll pallets and dollys (roll containers with no side frames) are equipment intended for moving goods. They comprise apparatus fitted with fixed and/or swivel castors. For roll containers the superstructure comprises two or more frames which provide retention for items requiring transport and/or distribution. There is huge usage of roll containers in Europe and the UK was the leader in the field in early design and innovation. For example, one single large UK supermarket already in the 1980s had 350,000 roll containers on the move every night in vehicles containing food deliveries. Roll containers and dollies can be supplied in a variety of materials and the European Standard classifies roll containers into four main styles. One of these styles, the Nesting style, is further sub-divided into five derived forms and the Demountable style is sub-divided in two derived forms. The EN 12674-1: 1999: Roll containers - Terminology, gives details of these styles.
V-Frame style rollcontainer
When CEN first announced work in the rollcontainer field, it classified roll containers with pallets. PalletLink, as Convener at the time of the EN pallet standards programme took on the convenorship and secretariat of this new area and in due course ran the testing development programme until the EN programme was completed in 2006. The main technical effort was put in by the UK Technical Committee plus an active CEN Working group comprising Denmark, Finland and France. France already had a National standard and tests on roll containers which helped CEN produce the second roll container document - EN 12674-2: 2001: Roll containers - General design & safety principles. This EN gives methods of measuring working dimensions and aspects of design that manufacturers need to be aware of, in order to avoid ambiguity in specifying these complex structures.
Castor standards of various sizes, types and qualities are essential to roll containers and dollys and standards were commenced by CEN by a separate Committee just before roll containers. There are large ranges varying from hospital castors, to office chair castors and the EN produced on castor standards was timely for the CEN Roll containers Working Group (WG8). A listing of these EN castors standards is given below.
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63a INDEX OF ROLLCONTAINER standards and related documents (PDF 11kb)63b INDEX OF CASTOR standards and related documents (PDF 11kb)65e HSE FIS 33 Roll cages info sheet April 2003 4pp (PDF 27kb)