Chiller truck sizes in Dubai: 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 tonne compared

In the UAE the number in front of a commercial vehicle is its payload. A 3 ton chiller truck is rated to carry 3,000 kg of goods; the vehicle underneath weighs a good deal more than that before anything is loaded. The same convention runs through the whole range, so a 5 ton reefer carries 5,000 kg and a 10 ton carries 10,000 kg. The naming trap is unpicked in full in what a 3 ton pickup actually means, and it works exactly the same way on refrigerated bodies.

What the tonnage does not tell you is the floor. Two vehicles can both be rated at three tonnes and have bodies a metre apart in length, because the body is built onto the chassis rather than supplied with it. That is why a payload figure on its own cannot answer the question people are really asking, which is how much of their stock goes in one load.

The words around the tonnage vary too. Chiller van, chiller truck, freezer truck and reefer all describe the same piece of equipment: an insulated body with a refrigeration unit set to a temperature. The setting is what separates a chiller from a freezer, not the vehicle, and chiller van, freezer van or reefer truck sets that out properly.

So the useful comparison is not between tonnages at all. It is between three numbers on each vehicle: the floor it gives you, the pallets that floor takes, and the weight you are allowed to put on it.

Take the 3-tonne as the worked example. The floor is 4.2 m long and 1.9 m wide. Two euro pallets sit side by side across that width, because 0.8 m and 0.8 m is 1.6 m, and three rows of 1.2 m run down the length to 3.6 m. That is six pallets on the floor with 0.3 m spare across the body and 0.6 m spare at the doors, which is space for a stillage, a stack of crates or the strapping you need rather than for a seventh pallet.

Standard pallets are wider, so the same body takes four rather than six. That single figure explains most of the disappointment we hear about 3-tonne bookings: a round planned on six pallets arrives, the pallets turn out to be 1.2 by 1.0 m, and two of them have no floor to stand on.

The 5-tonne takes eight of either kind, which is why it is the size most wholesalers settle on. The 10-tonne is where euro pallets pull ahead: three fit across 2.4 m exactly, six rows fit down 7.5 m, and you are carrying eighteen. In standard pallets the same body is twelve to fourteen, because the geometry stops being neat.

Two cautions on all of these. They are floor counts, one layer high, with no overhang: stacking a second layer depends entirely on what is on the pallet, not on the truck. And they assume pallets loaded square. Send us your pallet size and the number you need to move and we will tell you which body takes them, and measure the actual vehicle if it is close.

Insulation is the first. The walls, floor and roof of a cold body are thick, so a truck that measures the same as a dry one on the outside measures less inside. The figures in the table above are the internal ones for our vehicles, which is the only measurement worth planning around.

The unit is the second. On a box body the evaporator sits at the front, inside the load space, and it needs air to move around it. A load pressed flat against it will read a perfect temperature at the gauge and leave the goods at the back warm, which is a loading fault rather than a fault with the vehicle.

Height is the third, and the one most often over-planned. You can measure 1.9 m inside a 3-tonne body, but you cannot fill all of it: cold air has to get over the top of the load and back to the unit. Stack to something short of the roof and leave the channel, especially on a frozen load where the difference between the front and the back of the body is largest.

Finally, the body holds one temperature at a time. There is no partition, so a mixed frozen and chilled round is either two runs, two vehicles, or insulated boxes inside the body for the smaller half of the load.

Small, frequent drops in dense districts are 1-tonne work. Fifteen restaurant or pharmacy stops through Deira, Karama and Al Nahda are limited by parking and door openings, not by volume, and the van that gets to the door beats the truck that has to stop at the end of the street. It is also the one your existing staff can drive.

A full morning round from a cold store to six or eight kitchens is the 3-tonne. Six euro pallets, a driver who can reverse onto a dock, and a body small enough for a mall service entrance: that is the ordinary shape of a restaurant supply run, and the reason the 3-tonne is our most-booked refrigerated vehicle.

Wholesale and hypermarket deliveries are 5-tonne work. Eight pallets, dock-height loading and inter-emirate legs where the mileage matters more than the manoeuvring. Above that, a distribution run serving several stores in one trip, or a transfer between cold stores, is the 10-tonne: eighteen euro pallets in one movement is the whole argument for it.

If the round does not fit any of those neatly, tell us the number of drops, the pallet size and the heaviest pallet, and we will name the vehicle. Rates for every size are on the rate card, and if the answer is a smaller vehicle than you asked for, we will say so.