New Volvos arrive at Sheephill Quarry, Dumbarton

Breaking with its traditional brand of loading shovel, Thompson Quarries, a division of William Thompson & Son (Dumbarton) Ltd has opted for a brace of Volvo L180H wheeled loaders for its quarrying activities for the first time...

“Moving to the Volvo brand has been a great experience so far,” says Managing Director, Andrew Thompson. “Our operators certainly appreciate the comfort and responsiveness of the machines which already are proving to be the optimum sized shovels for our operations at Sheephill Quarry, returning high productivity with good fuel economy.”

The two machines have been equipped with heavy-duty L5 tyres and 6.0m³ rehandling buckets, one with a straight edge rehandling material at the wash plant and the other with teeth working at the face, the material being a hard whinstone basalt. Both machines benefit from Volvo’s Co-pilot load assist option which is the very latest in weigh loading sophistication allowing the operator to calibrate either his bucket or block handling forks via the touchscreen pad in the cab. Bucket loads and the number of buckets filled can be recorded in addition to the system storing a whole array of product menus. The Co-pilot touchscreen automatically becomes a rear view screen when the machine is put into reverse, interacting with the rear view camera. Furthermore, the Co- pilot system is linked in with the Care Track system – Volvo’s telematics system which can feed back information to a remote location.

Powered by a 13-litre stage-IV final engine developing 334hp in a relatively low rpm range of between 1300 and 1400 rpm, the twenty-five tonne L180H, complete with its large capacity rehandling bucket offers a generous full turn tip load of 17.3 tonnes and is fully optimized for moving high tonnages in the quarry as well as loading road-going vehicles in just two passes.