1998-2023. Built and tested hundreds of thousands of times. We are talking about the Profi Liner by German Krone which is celebrating its 25th birthday this year. When it came to drop side semi-trailers, which were common in the late 1990s, the solid Krone trailers were then considered true benchmarks. However, in the meantime, the transport landscape has changed rapidly, especially in the last decade. The European domestic market was getting bigger and pallet logistics required sliding tarp semi-trailers, because more and more people were loading from the side instead of from the rear.
Soon a new type of vehicle became widespread: the tilt. Technically speaking, a container whose sides were made up of sliding tarpaulins that could be operated individually, without folding sides. Krone responded to the growing demand with its own sliding tarpaulin semi-trailer, but the project initially presented pitfalls.
Krone’s biggest customer at the time, always referring to 1998, was the founder of Krone Scandinavia, Leif Toft. The latter wrote a three-page letter to Bernard Krone requesting a redesign of the sliding tarpaulin semi-trailer. Immediately, Sir Bernard commissioned a project team to redesign it and after just six months the prototype of the new Krone curtainsider semi-trailer was ready, full of innovative ideas, some of which can still be found in the Profi Liner today (and now also with competitors): the steel end wall, the hinged and single pivot steel rear door, the basic frame structure and the cable routing.
From the beginning, developers have relied on a modular structure to take advantage of economies of scale. Another quality feature, which Krone first introduced in 1997, was the KTL plus powder process for long-term rust protection.