Special transport vehicle for carrying containers. In the early days of the development of container transportation, due to the small load capacity and small quantity of containers, ordinary trucks were mostly used for transportation. Since the 1960s, with the rapid development of container transportation, various countries have successively developed vehicles specifically designed to transport containers. The size of the container car loading part is determined according to the standard container size, and twist lock devices for fixing the container are provided at positions corresponding to the four corners of the bottom of the container.
Container cars usually take the form of a combination of car trains. This combination includes semi-trailer, full-trailer and double-trailer, among which semi-trailer car trains are the most common.
There are two types of semi-trailers that make up a container car train: flatbed type and skeleton type. The loading part of the flatbed semi-trailer is a flatbed cargo platform, which can be used to ship containers or ordinary long cargo. The vehicle has high efficiency. The loading part of a skeleton semi-trailer is a chassis frame without a cargo platform. After the container is loaded on the vehicle and fixed by a twist lock device, it also becomes the strength component of the semi-trailer. Skeleton semi-trailers can only be used to transport containers. It has the advantages of small weight, simple structure and easy maintenance.
According to the structural form, container semi-trailers are divided into two types: straight frame type and gooseneck type. Straight-frame semi-trailers are suitable for transporting containers with flat-bottom structures; gooseneck semi-trailers are specially designed to transport containers with grooved bottom structures, which can reduce the loading height.