Trailer washout equipment: nine questions to ask before you buy

Search for trailer washout equipment and you find pump packages, spray guns and dock-mounted washout systems, most of them built around a person with a hose. A unit that washes a trailer interior with nobody in the cargo space is a different purchase, and a spec sheet does not tell you what to require. We put the nine questions below to ourselves when we no longer wanted to clean interiors by hand at HB Truckwash on the Maasvlakte and Europoort.

What exactly must trailer washout equipment clean?

Floor, walls and ceiling, over the full length of the cargo space. That is the first requirement and the one that fails most often. Equipment that only rinses the floor does not solve the problem, because the residues an auditor looks for sit in the corners and against the ceiling. Ask the supplier which surfaces the wash head reaches and how far back it travels.

On the HB Nexus a telescopic arm drives the full length of the trailer or container. The wash head with rotating nozzles covers floor, walls and ceiling in one programme, and you choose a programme per type of load, from food residues to chemical residues. How arm and wash head are built into the container is shown on the page about the robot. If a specification does not say ceiling, the ceiling is not cleaned.

How many wash cycles per hour must the equipment deliver?

Work from your busiest day, not from the average. A full HACCP wash cycle on the HB Nexus, including disinfection and certificate, takes at most 15 minutes. That is 4 wash cycles per hour, day and night, because no staff are involved. One unit handles around 33,000 wash cycles per year.

One caveat: the machine only reaches that capacity if the trailers actually arrive, so put your hourly inflow next to the sum. Our article on what an interior trailer wash system costs explains the model: six wash days per week, a fixed annual amount for the machine and a marginal cost per wash; at 60 euros per wash the tipping point is around six vehicles per day. With the ROI calculator you fill in your own numbers.

Who operates a trailer washout system?

Nobody, if it is done right. Ask the supplier whether someone still has to be there to aim the lance, start the programme or close the door. If so, you need a washer at every moment a trailer turns up, and you are back at the staffing problem you wanted to solve.

On the HB Nexus the driver docks the trailer. Collision protection and sensors watch the docking, the fully automatic control runs the programme and the arm does the work. No operator and no controls are needed at the wash bay, and nobody enters the box any more. That is also a safety argument: no more wet, slippery and chemical workplaces, and with that 99 percent fewer claims and accidents.

What proof does each wash cycle produce?

A record per wash that you can show at an audit without searching for it. Customers in food, pharma and chemicals ask for demonstrability, and a paper logbook does not keep up. Require that the equipment itself records which vehicle was washed, with which programme and for how long.

The HB Nexus registers every wash cycle automatically with a digital HACCP certificate through Nuvix. The certificate carries the licence plate, the programme, the duration and the status. All certificates are searchable in the customer portal, per vehicle and per date. What one looks like is on the HACCP certificate page. The wash result was tested independently by CCD Cleaning Consultancy in November 2024: 63 percent less microbial load after a Nexus wash cycle. The full report is available on request.

How does the equipment handle water and chemicals?

With a dosing system that keeps the amount of chemicals and the contact time the same every cycle. That requirement separates a box that is clean from a box that is clean today and not tomorrow. By hand, the washer decides how much product goes on and how long it sits. With equipment it must be fixed in the programme, so the result does not vary per shift or per washer.

In the HB Nexus the chemicals sit in a sealed technical room and are dosed automatically; nobody handles them any more. Each type of load has its own programme, without intermediate manual cleaning. Water use per wash cycle is 50 percent lower; where that halving comes from is explained in our article on halving truck wash water usage. Exact consumption in litres is supplied per location, with the connection values.

What does an interior washout unit add next to your existing truck wash?

It takes over the job your wash leaves undone: the cargo space. A gantry wash cleans the outside of cab and trailer; the inside has stayed manual work with a lance. You do not need a new wash bay; you place a unit next to the one you have. The HB Nexus is a 40ft ISO container that holds the whole machine, including the technical room with pumps, chemicals and controls. Plug and play means the unit is placed, connected and put into operation, and the build is modular. What you arrange in advance is a spot where a trailer or container can dock and the connections for it. Ask for a drawing of the set-up on your own site. Dimensions and connection values differ per set-up and are worked out per location, so the drawing fits your yard.

What about service, software and the demo?

Service: require a fixed maintenance arrangement and a way to see faults remotely. The HB Nexus runs under a service agreement with HB Group: monthly maintenance, remote monitoring via wifi and automatic software updates. Faults can be read out remotely.

Software: the equipment has to fit the way you plan and invoice. Nuvix, from the same family as the Nexus, handles planning, registration, invoicing and the customer portal, and holds every certificate. Whether it can link to your own systems is discussed per situation.

Bring the nine questions to the demo. A demo of the HB Nexus is where you see whether the answers above hold up in practice. The price is on request, because the set-up differs per location.