Hi all, I’m still about lurking about. I’m currently driving an 8 wheeler grab truck for a local depot on the gas contract. As the gang dig out the service holes I follow them down and collect the ‘spoil’ then tip it off in Leeds. We then buy back ‘recycled’ stone 65mm to dust. The truck carries 16 ton. The tip costs £9/ton and the stone costs£11/ton. In other words a trip to the tip costs over £300.
The thing is I’ve invented a device that could fit on any grab truck and recycle up to 75% of the spoil on site. I’m confident that it will reduce our £1’800 weekly tip bill by over half. As well as saving your truck miles. When you only get 5.6 to the gallon that’s a saving in itself.
I’m currently having a prototype made and having tested the theory I’m confident of the product. It has no moving parts and can be removed from the truck in less than a minute.
I know there are a couple of other around that may be interested in cutting their costs to this degree.
The unit is set to cost around £3000 so has a payback period of less than a month.
The thing is I’ve invented a device that could fit on any grab truck and recycle up to 75% of the spoil on site. I’m confident that it will reduce our £1’800 weekly tip bill by over half. As well as saving your truck miles. When you only get 5.6 to the gallon that’s a saving in itself.
Hello Marlow,
I´m a grab operator myself, your idea sounds interesting. But when you´ve 5 to 7 gangs to look after i.e, to muckaway and backfill, it just sounds like it would be too much hassle. I know my gangs won´t stand around and wait for me to recycle the spoil when there´s a load of track waiting to be backfilled. I don´t suppose its some sort of grid/sieve that fits across the body? Whatever it is, i wish you the best of luck with it. :smiley: I don´t suppose you ever worked in Leeds on The Green Duct` in its hey day? I did a bit for Galvins and MP Burke to name but a few. Is ther much happening there now with regards to grab work?
Phil. Blimey mate sounds very interesting for 3k even better ive just lobbed out nearly 40k on a concrete crusher /recycling machine fantastic save a fortune but im very intriged with your idea!
Is it something like those digger crushing buckets?? nope cause they can cost 20k plus hmmmmmmm
Lets hear more mate and the very best of luck to you well done!
Good luck to you mate…could be a good idea if you are only backfilling a couple of service holes and the spoil coming out is suitable to recycle… You must be on gas escapes if you have the time to commit to your invention…When you get promoted to an 8 Wheeler to look after some of the Irish, Scotttish, Geordie subbies you wont have much time for anything,I would say it is too time consuming,subbies on the gas,water and cables need meterage to make money and the dont have time to wait for spoil to be recycled.
But i do agree with the boys who have said subbies wont wait, many years ago i was one of those subbies putting in those big yellow plastic gas mains all over East Anglia with a firm called Biggs Wall, great days bloody hard work mostly done by hand as well bit different now they wont even dig a little hole out now in the verge without a mini digger. No red tape cr*p then either if you wanted to dig a hole in the town centre then you just got on and done it where you wanted with perhaps one road cone and a bent road arrow sign. Very hard graft but loved it ,wouldnt /coulnt do it now!
Our 8 wheel grab lorry driver was called John John , why because he had to be in two places at once!!
Anyhow Phil lets here more?
Trouble is local councils will be selective with their backfill material eg type1 mot only but i do know here that weve worked with the council and they have to be seen to recycle as much as possible so your idea could be ago , recycling is big business and getting bigger all the time.
local haulage firms here are dead many packing in but haulage firms doing recycling are very busy, so ■■
I’ve had the prototype made and tested it out on Thursday. It worked very well.
I understand the time constraints more than most. The work I do is not escapes it is replacement gas main work. This week the lads I look after laid over 600 meters.
The contraption works very quickly, and I believe saves time. Where normally I would have to brake off clearing spoil to take it to the tip I can carry on backfilling.
The particular road we are working on at the moment had some good quality spoil. Indeed 75% of it was good enough to recycle on site. In other words once I have 16 ton on 12 ton could be used for backfill.
It is true that it slows you a little. I’ll try to explain. Normally once you have picked up the spoil you just drop it in the tipper. With the contraption on you drop it into the contraption then after about 3 seconds you drop the bucket back into the machine and empty it. The machine is the same size as the open bucket but it is suspended on the sides of the tipper. So I starting with an empty tipper with the machine over the back end. On the test I did I found that I could drop 3 buckets into the machine before I needed to empty it so the lost time is minimal. (stone smaller than 60mm drops through into the body.) The tarmac and lumps are lifted out of the machine and dropped to the front. So the only time lost is while you knuckle the crane up to drop the crap on the front.
The regulations in this industry are immense and so without further approval I can not use it on site. I am also going to need approval of the council in regards of the quality of the backfill stone. With all this in mind and the mountain of red tape and paperwork need to get everything approved I have spoken with someone at enterprise. I have a meeting on site on Monday to demonstrate it.
I would like to develop it on my own but realise that I need a big company on board to make it a success.
I’ll let you know how things go on but for the time being I won’t describe it any further for obvious reasons.
Phil , sounds a great idea mate well done, councils/ utilitys must be seen to do their recycling bit.
As for backing surely some big noise eg British Gas /Water etc must look at your idea,dont forget to sort out that patent ( i sound like Duncan ballantine ).
Mate im very interested we are already into recycling this could be a goer. please keep us informed all info gratefull.