Manufacturers attended an IAA battle across several categories to claim a coveted Trailer Innovation Award, Tim Blakemore brings Transport News the winners.
FROM A humble air-line connector incorporating a simple but ingenious visual indicator of air leaks, to an exotic food tanker design that would not look out of place on a future Star Wars film set, together with electrification of one sort or another right, left and centre, the engineers behind Europe’s trailers, truck bodies and their components evidently have been working overtime on fresh ideas over the past two years, judging by an impressive array of entries in the 2023 Trailer Innovation awards scheme.
This pan-European concept, designed from the outset to recognise excellence in trailer and truck bodies as distinct from motor vehicles, has been running biennially since 2002, in parallel with the world’s biggest commercial vehicle show, the IAA (International Automobil Ausstellung), in Hanover, Germany.
Though the 2020 IAA show was among many cancelled owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trailer Innovation awards went ahead as usual, just with the presentations made online instead of at an awards ceremony. But like the IAA show, the in-person presentation was back this time around, in Hanover last September.
