What makes a truck a fine art truck?

An averarge citizen (like me :) sees trucks as large or small, white or not, box truck or flat bed. 

It took quite a while till I could recognise a fine art truck myself!

Demand for fine art trucks is quite low, there are usually only a few companies per country who need such vehicles, thus they are mostly tailor made and as such accordingly expensive. 

Here you can find a nicely illustrated article on this subject by our Scandinavian partner agent MTAB. And below a more detailed list of characteristics that make a fine art truck and how they guarantee security in terms of climate conditions, vibrations and theft:

• It is always a box truck, with proper walls and roof, with no windows or textile elements outside. It is both for isolation and security. There is also usually a separate key for the box and often a tail lift, vertically folded at the truck's back,  that has to be lowered before the box-door becomes accessible at all.
• The inside of a truck-box is air conditioned. You can recognise it by large air conditioners that are placed above the driver's cabin or in the very back on the box inside (see the pics). Not only antique objects, but also contemporary photographs are very fragile to high temperatures.
• The inside of a truck-box is adapted for transports of fragile objects: walls are often clad with carpet-like textile and equipped with many metal eyes , which are used to securely fix crates onboard with transport belts. Besides, there are small holes in the floor and the ceiling for vertical metal poles, with which transported objects can be additionally prevented from moving back and forth, in case binding to the walls is considered insufficient, e.g. if a crate is very large or very heavy. 
• A fine art truck has a tail lift / lifting platform. It is a very important element of equippment, which guarantees that transported objects stay in an upright position while loading/ unloading, with possibly few turbulences. From time to time a client or lender asks us, if the truck we planned for a pick-up has a tail lift. All of our truck of course do, but it means that there are shipping companies, who try to ship art works without. What may surprise you while aquiring estimates for transports of very heavy objects is, that an agent may refuse to do it or send a huge truck for a collection just one small crate. It is due to the fact that standard tail lifts can elevate max 750 kg at a time (smaller trucks only ca. 400 kg) and breaks easily down, if overloaded.

• 
  A fine-truck has an air suspension. This means it is equipped with pneumatic springs, which can be seen behind the wheels, usually in form of black air bags. This comes in handy during transports of glass or ceramic objects or collections/deliveries in hitorical city centres, where streets are often cobbled.  (The image comes from Wikipedia, there is also an article about air suspension, should you be interested in more details)

Apart from the ones above, there are some further typical fine art truck gadgets: 

• Extra courier seat, for couriers who personally accompany transports of loans
• GPS tracking system. All our trucks have built in chips that allow traffic managers to check online in real time, where the truck exactly is and with what speed it is moving. Maybe you happen to have seen the 4^th season of „Ray Donovan”. His partners steal a truck full of precious art works and blackmail a Russian gangster by hiding it. In real life, succesfully hiding a truck with a GPS chip would be pretty difficult :) 

• An ignition interlock device or breath alcohol ignition interlock device (IID and BAIID) – it is basically a built-in breathaliser whose test you have to pass before starting the engine. Meant for bus drivers, in case of fine art trucks it is actually a cherry on top of the cake. Still, it is nice to assure clients and lenders that their art works are SO well taken care of that if a driver has one beer to much in the evening, he will be automatically prevented from moving the truck next morning.  
• Alarm – every truck usually have an alarm.... but we all also know how inefficient alarms are, as far as theft prevention goes.

...and several other things which are generally good to know about trucks :)

• Already mentioned in the post about dimensions: remember that even really large fine art trucks have limited capacities, as their maximal dimensions are strictly regulated by the law. Consequently, objects higher than ca. 2,80 m usually have to be transported in a jumbo trailer with a lowered suspension and objects both wider and longer than 1,22 m cannot be placed one along another in a truck (max width 2,45 m), which as you can imagine, multiplies the shipping costs.
• It is hopefully obvious: 3,5t, 5,5t, 12t, 18t is the number of tonnes means the maximum allowed gross weight of a truck. Not its payload :) Example: our 12t truck weights empty already 9,5 t. Its maximally allowed payload is thus 2,5t. Consequently, to transport 6t of marbel sculptures, I had to calculate 3 separate rides, even though in terms of volume they would all fit in in one turn. I am sure there are shippers who would quote and execute it as a single ride – please note that it is illegal and dangerous, as such an overloaded truck is more difficult to steer and has a much longer braking distance!

• 
  The maximum speed is often limited by a built-in velocity blocker (e.g. 120 km/h for up to 3,5t; 90 km/h for up to 7,5 t and 80 km/h for all heavier – allowed speed limits differ though). This means that you cannot apply Google maps to calculate driving times! Unfortunately there are some registrars / lenders who eagerly forget laws of physics and the law in general, while planning collection and delivery, and react with fury or accusations of unprofessionalism, when our trucks don't rush through Europe with 150 km/h :)

Hopefully it is now clearer for you, why transports with fine art trucks must be more expensive and why they take much longer than Google maps say :)