A Scottish waste recycler and skip hirer has snapped up its first Liebherr telehandler to cope with a punishing workload.
James Buchanan, MD of Livingston-based Buchanan Skip Hire, acknowledged that the outgoing materials handler just didn’t fit the bill. “It wasn’t really up to the punishment it was getting in a waste yard, even though it was sold to us as a waste specification model,” he explained.
The search for a more suitable replacement led him to Liebherr and the purchase of a T 55-7S model.
Family-owned Buchanan Skip Hire was founded in the late 1980s and has developed into an operation capable of handling up to 40,000 tonnes a year of general skip waste. Further expansion is on the horizon following the recent move into a neighbouring parcel of land.
Segregating incoming material is a major factor on sites and at Buchanan’s yard, larger items go into separate piles before the remainder is fed through a processing plant consisting of a trommel, picking stations, magnets and air separators with the sorted material dropping into bays below the picking station. While the material is sifted by a pair of 20t material handlers, almost everything else is the responsibility of the new Liebherr.
Liebherr explained that heavy-duty Spicer axles give ‘excellent’ ground clearance and are fitted with semi-solid Camso tyres which eliminate the worry and cost of punctures while at the same time providing a ‘smoother ride and better traction’. The manoeuvrability afforded by four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering allows the operator to squeeze the telehandler into some tight spaces.
Hydrostatic transmission is used for motion. Liebherr added that ‘smooth’ gear changes and ‘impressive pushing power’ mean the T 55-7S will penetrate stockpiles easier while the hydrostatic transmission reduces the requirement to use the service brakes.
The bustling yard at Buchanan keeps the machine busy all day, whether it’s pushing incoming waste towards the material handler for picking and sorting or moving sorted waste into a separate pile ready for feeding into the trommel. The big general-purpose bucket copes easily with wood, plastics and aggregate after the twin material handlers have picked out larger metals. And should the company wish to swap from the oversize GP bucket to a powered attachment, adjusting pressures and flows is described as straightforward. A single-stage boom carries Liebherr’s own hydraulic quick coupler for ‘rapid’ attachment changeover with three service lines available to power attachments when needed.
James Buchanan said, “The components of the Liebherr seem to be made for the heavier application and it has handled the works very well.”
As an added bonus, Liebherr’s Bathgate depot is just a few miles away should support be required.
