The present invention relates to certain arrangements for loading cargo. While the invention is mainly applicable to freight or cargo conveyed by aircraft, it will find use also in connection with cargo freighted by railroad or trucks.
It has become common practice to load freight into a conveying vehicle, the goods packed in a number of identical or nearly identical packages such as boxes, cartons or crates, these latter being arranged to form a four sided prism, positioned on a pallet. The pallet with its cargo thereon is conveyed by means of fork lifts or other arrangements into the freight compartment of the conveying vehicle, be it an aircraft, a railway carriage or a truck.
Especially in the case of aircraft being used as the conveying vehicle, it has been found that in many cases at its return trip, the vehicle remains empty, thus its load capacity is not fully exploited, in other words the cost of freight becomes in many cases exorbitant, or at least the operation is not as economical as it could be. For this reason it has been suggested to use so called convertible aircraft, that is to say craft wherefrom the seating arrangement, i.e. the individual seats can be removed, thus creating empty space for the introduction of cargo. However, it has been found that operating this way, namely using an aircraft alternatingly as a freight conveying vehicle and a passenger conveying vehicle, is in many cases unpractical for the reason that the mounting of seating capacity is a time-consuming operation, so that it can be put into practice only in those cases where an aircraft is being used during an extended period of time as a passenger conveying vehicle, and at other times as a freight conveying vehicle. However, the quick change from one trip to another i.e. from a trip in one direction to that in an opposite direction is not practical, for the simple reason that seating equipment is not always available at the place where the change is to be made.