The company is targeting becoming one of the best commercial vehicle application manufacturers in India with a turnover of Rs. 500 crores in 2024-25 with a single point agenda of delivering best quality products and services as a one-stop-solution for all applications
TI Truck Body Works (TBW) is one of the premium companies in the field of commercial vehicle application manufacturing. The company is a part of the renowned Murugappa Group, led by Tube Investments of India Division. Tube Investments of India Ltd. (TII) is a premier engineering company providing engineering and mobility solutions with its precision tubes and strips, metal-formed products, chains, and cycles to multiple industries. TII is a preferred tier-1 supplier of safety-critical precision parts to all major OEM’s in the automotive industry with strong presence in the power sector, off-road, textile machinery and general engineering segments.
TI TBW was set as a corresponding business division in 2018, through the value proposition of product, service-orientation and commitment to deliver nothing but top-notch products with its state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities at Chennai, Pune and Bawal. At TI TBW, best-in-class industry standards are maintained in terms of raw material procurement, design, technology, and innovation, and quality, making them one of the most promising players to watch out for over the long-term in the truck application space.
Trailer Range
TI TBW extended its product range to the trailer segment in FY 2021-22 and designed and developed trailers to suit various applications, as follows. These are in addition to trailers with SS tank on rigid platforms for food product like edible oil, milk etc. These tanks were designed and developed by the PD team and are being regularly supplied to customers in India.
• Jumbo: High volume container series for e-commerce or consumer products. These trailers come with various options like side opening, rear opening and multiple internal decks with hydraulics. They can be used for various products like bottle pallets, tyres, e-commerce and automotive parts where high volume is required.
• Mammoth: Sidewall trailer series with various designs for cement bags, coal, sand, blue metal etc. These come with options for return load like coil, container, long member, etc. It has a sidewall with corrugated sheets for bags and pallets, heavy-duty side wall with rigid box for loose material and return load ISO container or coil, low-weight trailer for coal application, drop-down side wall for market load, etc.
• Rhino: Tip trailer range for multiple applications such as coal, gravel, sand, ore etc. Low-weight trailers for on-road application to carry coal or gravel and heavy-duty trailer for off-road application to carry ore on rough roads.
• Panther: Flat series covered flatbed trailer for containers, coil and market load, skeleton trailer for ISO container transportation with genset bracket, bomb cart trailer for ISO container handling inside port area, etc.
These trailers are available in various combinations and options like mechanical suspension, air suspension and combo suspension for 52 T and 54 T GVW, BCS, ABS and EBS, telematics, smart tyre, hub odometer and rear camera etc. for increased comfort, safety and monitoring the vehicles as per customers’ requirements.
Manufacturing Hubs
TBW effectively used the pandemic time to build manufacturing hubs across India. “We planned to come up with four manufacturing facilities across India. So far we have initiated three facilities in this financial year with all the required machinery and infrastructure in Pune, Bawal and Chennai. These facilities are equipped with CNC equipment, beam bending SPMs, rolling machines, shot blasting and paint booths, compressors, power back-up, welding machines and pneumatic hand tools for manufacturing various load bodies and trailers,” informs V. Vijayakumar, Business Head, TI Truck Body Works. The Pune facility can produce 200 trailers and 100 load bodies in its shed of around 4,000 sq. metres over a premise of 23,500 sq. metres.
The Bawal facility can produce 100 trailers or 100 load bodies in its shed of around 3,000 sq. metres over land spread of 20,000 sq. metres. “In Chennai we have a prototype shop of 1,000 sq. metres inside our tube cutting centre. The TBW factory is under construction and will be inaugurated in Q4 of this financial year with a shed size of around 4,000 sq. metres with a land of 20,000 sq. metres that can further be expanded to 1,62,000 sq. metres as and when required. This facility can produce 100 trailers and 300 load bodies and tippers from the next financial year 2022-23,” Vijayakumar says.
Product Development
TBW has a team of seven engineers working on different designs to suit various applications in rigids and trailers. “We use FEA, modelling and 2D drafting for our products to check all the critical stress patterns and strengths. Our team understands the dynamic requirements of these products and ensures that suitable stiffeners and closuring plates are provided to guarantee structural strength and optimum weight,” Vijayakumar states. It is now working on fuel tanks, reefers, bulkers and special application trailers. The company has obtained AIS 113 certification for most of its trailer models from the International Centre for Automotive Technology and will get more models approved this financial year to take the total count of models to more than 1,000. TBW has also obtained AIS 093 for some of its load bodies and is working on getting PESO approval to create a footprint in the fuel tank segment.
Road Ahead
TBW proposes to have four main manufacturing plants, four satellite assembly plants and 10 company-owned service hubs across India to cater to the domestic business but with global technology and processes. “We are also working to step into OE supplies, special applications, and defence and space research agencies’ requirement in the years to come. We are building a separate team for this purpose. Further, we are also working to build TB franchise manufacturers to work at locations where we don’t have local presence to cater to the local market. They will follow the same process as we follow in our manufacturing plant,” Vijayakumar states. TBW want to be one of the best commercial vehicle application manufacturers in India with turnover of Rs 500 crore in 2024-25 with a single point agenda of delivering best quality products and services as a one-stop-solution for all applications.