We are looking at purchasing a truck to move plant equipment around for a new business venture. Most likely we’ll go for a beaver tail with Hiab. The plant will be about 13-14 tonnes in total. We have a budget of about 20K. The actual truck itself will only be in use for about 2-3 hrs every day or second day.
Could you recommend a truck that would be suited to this type of useage with fairly decent fuel efficiency? What kind of mileage and year would you hope to get for the budget above and what kind of mileage would be getting to an unacceptable level on a setup like this? What HP would you recommend? We just need something that will be fairly reliable to get us through 2-3 yrs before we upgrade to something newer.
I know very little about the job in question but I would think you would be needing an 8 wheeler if you want to be able to carry 14t with a HIAB, and I would think any 8 wheeler with HIAB that you can get for £20k is going to be a bit of a shed.
Have you considered just contracting out the haulage element of the venture initially while you see how it goes? That might well be the best route given that it doesn’t sound like you need the vehicle very much of the time.
Paul
repton:
I know very little about the job in question but I would think you would be needing an 8 wheeler if you want to be able to carry 14t with a HIAB, and I would think any 8 wheeler with HIAB that you can get for £20k is going to be a bit of a shed.Have you considered just contracting out the haulage element of the venture initially while you see how it goes? That might well be the best route given that it doesn’t sound like you need the vehicle very much of the time.
Paul
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the info. Contracting out isn’t really an option as I would need the Hiab in attendance at various stages throughout the day to move different pieces of equipment around.
I’ve seen a good few 6 wheelers with Hiabs advertised for very small money that looked in fairly good nick. Would an eight wheeler be that much more expensive? Or was I just looking at dressed up junk 
Hi,
Plant bodies are rarely advertised as there’s a strong export market for them.
Try Mascus (mascus.co.uk) for research on whats available and prices.
The two main UK dealers for plant bodies/cranes are Macs Trucks near Huddersfield and MV Commercial at Livingston, both have websites.
Be aware, the Mascus site searches for stuff all across Europe (and even further afield), but should give a good indication of prices.
Hope this helps.
You’ll be lucky, ditch the crane idea it will be too heavy & and You don’t want to spend enough. Its a huge investment to use for a few hours every day or two, find someone local who does ad-hoc work & see what they want for a half days hire. You’ll get a good few plant moves in this current climate for "0k I’ll tell You…
What about a standard rigid plant body and get a small palfinger or fassi retrofitted to it. The stuff I need to move is only about 2 tonnes each. The main plant moves itself. What would I expect to pay for a half decent one?
The contracting of the work won’t work for us. The equipment would need to be available to us at any stage throughout the day. So a driver would have to have his equipment there 10hrs a day. I realise its a significant investment but there is no cheap options in this whole set up. I’m just trying to keep costs down on the least important part.
Greenhorn:
What about a standard rigid plant body and get a small palfinger or fassi retrofitted to it. The stuff I need to move is only about 2 tonnes each. The main plant moves itself. .
The weight will still cause you a problem, a 6 wheeler with plant body will weigh somewhere about 12 tonnes ( my guess based on knowing the weight of my own 6 wheeler with a much lighter body fitted) add a couple of tonnes for a hiab and the 13-14 tonnes of plant you will be carrying and you’re overweight 
A 6 wheeler with a plant body & a 20t/m crane made as light as F will be just about able to get 10t payload, if You want 12t plus & craneage You need an 8 wheeler, You may fall lucky & get something that an ex London haulier no longer uses, just a thought…
Greenhorn:
What about a standard rigid plant body and get a small palfinger or fassi retrofitted to it. The stuff I need to move is only about 2 tonnes each. The main plant moves itself. What would I expect to pay for a half decent one?
Most plant lorries with a crane, the body forms part of the subframe for the crane, to retrofit a crane to a standard body would most likley cost as much if not more than the additional cost of buying a purpose built one, and possibly weigh more as well.
The stuff you need to lift is about 2t, but how far away from the lorry do you need to lift it?
As others have said a plant lorry with crane to carry the weight you want you`ll need a 8 wheeler=big money, if you need to go to london your looking £100k+
pig pen:
Most plant lorries with a crane, the body forms part of the subframe for the crane, to retrofit a crane to a standard body would most likley cost as much if not more than the additional cost of buying a purpose built one, and possibly weigh more as well.
The stuff you need to lift is about 2t, but how far away from the lorry do you need to lift it?
As others have said a plant lorry with crane to carry the weight you want you`ll need a 8 wheeler=big money, if you need to go to london your looking £100k+
Really only need to lift it three to four metres off the truck and it will all be loaded towards the cab so the jib would only need to be short.
So in short the best advice is either to use a lighter main piece of plant (which is possible), draw a trailer behind a smaller 3 axle truck or get myself a Fastrac and plant trailer 
. Won’t be going near london.
What plant will it be carrying? Do you know the actual weights? Not just the plated ones. I think you will need an eight wheeler anyway but kerbside of plant is usually heavier than what the plate says due to fuel, oil, buckets/attachments ect.
How tight are the sites you need to get in and out of? Eight wheelers are a lot less manoeuvrable than six, unless you went for a rear steer but you won’t find many of them second hand as they are usually bought for a specific job and kept for longer not to mention the added value.
If you went down the fast track route you will need to run it on white diesel and it will be greedy!
Milage on hiab trucks usually isn’t to bad as they tend to be on local work. Our truck is an 02 plate and has around 360,000 km on the clock.
My truck above can carry 19.5 tonne
I have to say there is a lot of good advice above, a consistent thread is that you need payload headroom -my 6 wheeler was some 600 kilos heavier when we finished off for the road i.e beacons light bar front and rear of cab straps chains, even though we use poly based kit boxes etc all that kit ate into the payload.
When my dad was asked to run an 8 wheeler for a customer he was in a similar situation i.e didn’ want to part with a huge wad of cash - he brought an ex celcon block wagon five years old ex lease with full volvo history as it was an FL7 it was seen as under powered compared with a more popular FL10 but it was massively cheaper if you doing less than 200 km a day who cares if ot takes you 5 minutes longer it takes the same time to load
ibson:
My truck above can carry 19.5 tonne
You sure Chap? What size crane is it?
The Scania in our old yard with an 80t metre on was only good for 14t with a semi low loader behind it…
ibson:
What plant will it be carrying? Do you know the actual weights? Not just the plated ones. I think you will need an eight wheeler anyway but kerbside of plant is usually heavier than what the plate says due to fuel, oil, buckets/attachments ect.How tight are the sites you need to get in and out of? Eight wheelers are a lot less manoeuvrable than six, unless you went for a rear steer but you won’t find many of them second hand as they are usually bought for a specific job and kept for longer not to mention the added value.
If you went down the fast track route you will need to run it on white diesel and it will be greedy!
Milage on hiab trucks usually isn’t to bad as they tend to be on local work. Our truck is an 02 plate and has around 360,000 km on the clock.
Its a tracked drill rig. The sites in the majority will be plenty big. On the odd one we find tight we’ll use a skid steer to transport the stuff we would normally crane in and out. The main piece of equipment isn’t bought yet but the largest unit won’t exceed 11 tonnes.
Would you recommend running a 3 axle unit with a drawbar trialer behind. How many more km’s would you expect to get from your rig. I’ve seen loads of cheap 3 axle rigs online but they’re so cheap I’d be seriously worried about them although externally they look excellent. Am I wrong in thinking that way?
As mentioned above I’m not too bothered about being a little underpowered as 10/20mins extra doesn’t bother me. 90% of the work will be in a 150km radius and the truck wouldn’t be leaving site every evening, we’d probably run a van in tandem.
fly sheet:
ibson:
My truck above can carry 19.5 tonneYou sure Chap? What size crane is it?
The Scania in our old yard with an 80t metre on was only good for 14t with a semi low loader behind it…
Yeah I’m sure, I have been on enough scales with it 
it’s a 55t. That cat 953 weighs about 17 tonne if I remember correctly, our 360’s are the heaviest things we carry at around 17 tonne and close to 19.5 with 3 buckets, Here’s a few pics of the crane work we do:
Greenhorn:
ibson:
What plant will it be carrying? Do you know the actual weights? Not just the plated ones. I think you will need an eight wheeler anyway but kerbside of plant is usually heavier than what the plate says due to fuel, oil, buckets/attachments ect.How tight are the sites you need to get in and out of? Eight wheelers are a lot less manoeuvrable than six, unless you went for a rear steer but you won’t find many of them second hand as they are usually bought for a specific job and kept for longer not to mention the added value.
If you went down the fast track route you will need to run it on white diesel and it will be greedy!
Milage on hiab trucks usually isn’t to bad as they tend to be on local work. Our truck is an 02 plate and has around 360,000 km on the clock.
Its a tracked drill rig. The sites in the majority will be plenty big. On the odd one we find tight we’ll use a skid steer to transport the stuff we would normally crane in and out. The main piece of equipment isn’t bought yet but the largest unit won’t exceed 11 tonnes.
Would you recommend running a 3 axle unit with a drawbar trialer behind. How many more km’s would you expect to get from your rig. I’ve seen loads of cheap 3 axle rigs online but they’re so cheap I’d be seriously worried about them although externally they look excellent. Am I wrong in thinking that way?
As mentioned above I’m not too bothered about being a little underpowered as 10/20mins extra doesn’t bother me. 90% of the work will be in a 150km radius and the truck wouldn’t be leaving site every evening, we’d probably run a van in tandem.
A drawbar combination would probably be the cheapest and best option for you so long as you are not overloading the trailer, 11 tonne on the trailer and nothing on the truck will not be the best to tow, not mentioning the traction problems you may encounter, that’s the only problem we find with plant on drawbars, they are not designed to put weight onto the truck but rather just be pulled and balanced well.
You can always get the truck chipped to get a few more horses.
This is our other truck:
As you can see we put a fair bit of thought into our trucks, and they are used for lots of different tasks, thats just because of the work we do. But it’s not cheap! Myself and my dad helping designed the hook loader and drawbar combination and it took a lot of putting together with the ramp setup, it even has twist locks and can carry two 20ft containers. We would expect to get another 300 km out of that Scania, it will take us a several years though as most of our work is as you can guess… In south Wales.
ibson:
[This is our other truck:2
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That setup would suit me down to the ground if it had a Hiab. I could probably get away with a good few less horses too. What would you recommend in terms of power for say 14 tonne plus the trailer? Can’t make out exactly the model on yours.
Found a very good pdf file on truck weights and combined weights online and it has helped get my head around it
Greenhorn:
ibson:
[This is our other truck:2
1
0That setup would suit me down to the ground if it had a Hiab. I could probably get away with a good few less horses too. What would you recommend in terms of power for say 14 tonne plus the trailer? Can’t make out exactly the model on yours.
Found a very good pdf file on truck weights and combined weights online and it has helped get my head around it
Well that MAN TGS in the photo is a 440 euro 5 but sadly the add blue model due to a rear steer option on the truck, we went for plenty of horses as it can be running close to 44t and all round the south Wales valleys. I’m not 100% but it might be the biggest engine option for the TGS.
Our Scania is a 380 although we got it chipped to around 440 apparently… Although I think it outputs slightly less than that but still copes well and is usually running heavy too.
I think you want to be around the 300 range to be towing a drawbar and if it’s lacking a bit you have options to increase power.
We also built this custom short body that clips onto the Fith wheel of our Scania, I have seen a few people do it since with other hiab tractor units and even pull a drawbar trailer. We use ours for very small jobs and tight places, it’s very handy as we even made it with front twist locks and a rear pull out with lights and it can carry up to a 20ft container although I do ■■■■ myself with the overhang!
I only mention this option as you can pick up some trucks second hand with small hiab’s on the back maybe just enough for what you want.
Well I don’t know if this has been much help to you or if I have made it worse! there are so many options out there you just need to work out what’s best for you.