A wagon and drag is a rigid lorry with a drawbar trailer behind it. Not an artic — the trailer has its own front axles and is towed rather than carried. Coupled up it is around eighteen metres and carries close to artic payload. Uncoupled it is an ordinary eight-wheeler.

The problem it solves

You have four units to deliver to a site down a lane an artic cannot get up. Options: four rigid journeys, or one artic that cannot make the last mile, or a wagon and drag.

The outfit brings everything to a place near the site where there is room. The trailer is dropped there. The rigid takes two units up the lane, comes back, hooks the trailer back on or takes the other two off it, and finishes the job. One vehicle, one driver, one day.

What is on ours

They all carry the HIAB 658 EP-6, on a 44-tonne outfit. So the reach on the little vehicle is the same as the reach on the big one, which matters — on a lot of designs the small half of the outfit has no crane at all and is useless on its own.

The other advantage

Deck length in two pieces. A load that is awkward rather than long — a mix of a cabin, a container and a pallet of ancillaries — goes on two decks without the packing gymnastics a single deck needs. And each deck can be craned from the same machine.

What it is not

It is not a shortcut round an access problem. Dropping a trailer needs somewhere legal, level and out of the way to drop it, and that place has to be agreed with somebody who owns it. On a public road it is usually not possible at all.

Wagon and drag hire · The full fleet · Multi-cabin deliveries