PLANT & EQUIPMENT HIRE
The beauty of hired tracked plant is it can be taken off a job (eg a highway project) for another assignment and returned to the road within 48 hours.
MOBILE MACHINERY: SHOULD YOU RENT OR BUY?
The hiring of tracked crushing and screening plant can be beneficial for a number of reasons. As Paul Smith explains, it is quick and easy to install, operate and dismantle, and it encourages users to experiment with jobs they wouldn’t normally entertain.
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once spoke to David, an old contact of mine who owned a tracked impact crusher. He had acquired the system to process broken concrete on-site on a public highway project. David explained how an important customer of his, an asphalt producer, had called him in immediate need of some recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) material, as his inventory had been depleted. He did have a pile of unprocessed RAP, but no way to crush it to meet his deadline, and asked if he could hire David and his crew to lend a hand. “No problem” was David’s response. That Friday afternoon David loaded his tracked horizontal shaft impactor plant onto a low-deck semi-trailer and hauled it over to the customer’s yard. It began to crush RAP material that evening. His two-man team crushed RAP all weekend, putting down about 5000 tonnes of finished product. Then, on Sunday evening, David loaded the tracked plant back on the trailer and headed back to the highway project, where he commenced crushing concrete the next morning. David was very grateful that the mobility of “these new tracked plants” had allowed him to react and respond to such an unplanned but valuable business opportunity. He explained how it would have taken a couple of days and several haul loads just to set up his old wheeled plant. He wouldn’t have had adequate time to react, and even if he did, the costs to move and set up the old plant for a small volume of RAP would have been prohibitive. 4 Quarry 2020 Guide to Mobile Plant
The biggest advantage of tracked machines is they enable less experienced operators and crews to run crushers and screens.
David summarised it like this: “There is no way we could have done something like that with our old wheeled plants. Tracked plants have brought a paradigm shift to our industry.” This story really helps show the merits of hiring a tracked system. The capabilities and benefits of tracked plants explained in David’s story are obvious: •T hey can be quickly loaded onto a trailer and easily hauled to the material. •T hey do not require multiple transfer conveyors, which must be also moved and positioned. •O nce on-site, they can be up and running in a matter of minutes. •T hey do not require a large crew to operate.
ECONOMICS These capabilities equate to low “indirect” (or non-productive) costs compared with traditional systems requiring multiple loads and more labour to erect the equipment. Additional haul loads means additional fuel, driver wages, truck maintenance, etc, and obviously adding more time to erect the plant doesn’t just incur higher labour costs, it also increases downtime where the plant is not running. If we accept that processed material is the economic sponge that absorbs the indirect costs to move and set up the plant, then it becomes obvious that tracked plants provide an opportunity to process smaller quantities of material. Since a tracked plant does not
