January, 2015 marked the 21st anniversary of the genesis of renowned County Carlow trailer manufacturing company Smyth Trailers. We dropped into their well-appointed Bagenalstown facility to get an insight into day-to-day operations at this exceptional family business from co-founder/-proprietor Sam Smyth.
Smyth Trailers have been manufacturing high-quality trailers for a wide range of industries from their Garryhill, Bagenalstown, County Carlow base since 1994.
Established by brothers Sam and Clive Smyth, the pioneering family business delivers cost-effective, long-lasting and robust trailers to clients all over Ireland as well as serving a worldwide market.
To this end, they have developed successful partnerships with suppliers and distributors in both the northern and southern hemispheres. In recent times trailers have been exported to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Romania, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
All Smyth Trailers’ products (including silage, root crop, dump and grain trailers) are manufactured at a purpose-built manufacturing facility by a team of expert designers and fabricators, who can either build a standard trailer from their impressive existing range or design a bespoke trailer to exact customer requirements.
All trailers are of the very highest possible quality and finished to an unrivalled standard.
For example, Smyth’s Fieldmaster silage trailers are fitted with a stand holder, sprung drawbar, full RTA LED lighting, a robust chassis, rear door securely locked, handbrake/breakaway brake, safety prop and ladder, hose tidy, two-pack polyurethane paint system which is applied after being fully shotblasted and is then baked on.
The Fieldmaster has a capacity of 16, 18, 20 and 24 tonne.
Grain trailers, meanwhile, are a particular speciality of Smyth Trailers, manufactured with a strong, robust chassis. A high-tipping angle and full RTA LED lighting giving clients a highly-versatile solution.
Optional extras on the Fieldmaster, grain trailer and grain/silage trailer include a hydraulic grain door, grain chute, rollover cover, swivel hitch, air brakes with load sensing and/or hydraulic brakes with load sensing. Smyth Trailers also fit a wide range of tyres depending on customer requirements.
Reflecting on the inception of the business, Sam notes: “We were agricultural contractors all our lives. That’s what our father, Sam, did and in January ’94, which was a wet one, we decided to buy a welder and make a trailer or two in our spare time. The business just grew from there.
Becoming full-time trailer manufacturers was never part of the plan, but our reputation spread and we had more and more people contacting us asking us to build trailers for them.”
Sam still remembers the first trailer they built for a customer, as though it were only yesterday… “It was a 17ft tandem-axle trailer which we built for John Nolan from Tullow, who is still doing business with us today. That first one wasn’t easy but we worked on it until 11 o’clock, every night for a month, and we got there in the end.
The Smyths finished up contracting in 1999. Sadly, their father had passed away the previous year. It was from him that they inherited their flair for engineering and innovation. Sam Snr. put a six-cylinder lorry Engine into a Nuffield tractor and was also one of the first to put a six-cylinder Engine onto a trailer-drawn silage harvester. “We cut silage for one more year after he passed away,” Sam reflects. “We then had to decide on one or the other – contracting or trailers. We opted to give the trailers a go.”
The workshop gradually got bigger, more jobs came in, and we invested in machinery and equipment. Today, gainful employment is provided to 14 people in total. All trailers are built in-house, from scratch. These can be modified or tailored to the most discerning customer needs.
Regarding the company’s worldwide reach and how it came to export to places as far afield as South Africa and Australia, Sam says with a shrug of the shoulder: “People just seem to find us. I certainly didn’t go to any of these places looking for business.”
It just goes to show that when you produce a good product, word will spread near and far!
As for the range of trailers manufactured, the co-founder adds: “Grain and silage trailers would be the main ones. We’re also manufacturing more dump trailers again. That had stopped dead in ’09 but has been back again for the last couple of years.”
Smyth Trailers are always embracing new innovations and constantly trying to look ahead and make improvements to their products. For instance, this year, a new option of a one-piece silage side on silage trailers has been introduced, which is formed from a single sheet of steel and fully sealed so that no moisture can get in.
Smyth Trailers also introduced a new suspension system in early 2014, which is exclusive to them and offers unrivalled stability. Quite simply, you won’t get more stability anywhere.”
The Garryhill workshop is a veritable hive of activity and a trailer is built every single day. “We would have trailers in almost every county in Ireland and we focus on quality as an absolute priority, even if it costs a bit more. A high-quality trailer will save you money in the long run” says Sam.
Sam says he welcomes the new RSA legislation and guidelines governing the manufacture of trailers, which are due to be introduced in January, 2016. “We would have had most of these requirements in place already,” he concludes.
“The RSA accepted submissions from manufacturers and in fairness to them they listened to our suggestions. Normally, for ordinary wheels, trailers are allowed to carry nine tonnes per axle. We suggested that if people were using a wide flotation tyre, (which is designed to cause less compaction), this would surely do less damage to the roads. We suggested that another ton per axle should be allowed and they agreed with this.”
Twenty-one years on from its inception, Smyth Trailers is at the very forefront of the trailer manufacturing industry in Ireland.
Smyth Trailers Ireland Ltd.
Garryhill,
Bagenalstown,
County Carlow
Ireland
Phone: 059 9157652
Email: [email protected]
www.smythtrailers.com
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 3 No 4, May 2015
