Page 5 - Hub-4 Magazine Issue 75

The task was the production of high-quality building sand at one of Tarmac’s quarries in Nottinghamshire. Experienced operator Stuart Kahler was the man entrusted with ripping and pushing the material into a stockpile allowing the quarry to screen the material ready for delivery. Whilst out of the ground the sand is relatively soft and lightweight, in the ground it is totally the opposite - hard packed and abrasive. Stuart’s task was ripping and pushing an existing face with all
work carried out downhill. The area, approximately 100m2 was ripped down the
slope then across at about 40 degrees to break up the material as much as possible before the tractor was turned to face down the slope and push the material to the quickly growing pile at the bottom. With material quickly piling up in front of the blade the Liebherr just dug in and pushed with extraordinarily little change in speed and performance despite pushing a large wave of material before it.
Stuart has previously used a D9T to undertake this job however after a week of using the Liebherr was happy to say that this was the best tractor he has operated; “I have been on everything from a D6 size to D11 size from the big manufacturers and this tractor has really impressed me. I have operated a smaller Liebherr before and that was good. This is even better. It will out-push and out-rip the last tractor I used on this job. It is also far more comfortable and so far, is using at least 12 litres of fuel an hour less than the D9 was. In my books that is a big saving on fuel with an increase in production.”
It was easy to see why Stuart rates the new dozer as full blade after full blade was pushed with ease.
Quarry Manager Bryn Kidby was also overly impressed by the dozer’s production rates; “We usually get Stokey in for a month twice a year to provide us with sufficient reserves. The way Stuart is performing we could possibly knock a few days off that programme.”
www.hub-4.com July-August 22 - Issue 75
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