Best legal vehicle combination

[csservices]

That would be nasty, but we don't usually haul with the tractor, it's just a crane and chipping unit, we chip to waste and drive home again.

 

 

 

Here's a scenario for you.

 

 

 

Your on your way back from a job in your 16 plate transit, it's 3/4 full and weighs 4.6 tons, you're towing a 750kg timberwolf. Whilst going down a country road an old lady pulls out in front of you, she simply doesnt look, (we've all seen this happen on occasion). So you brake but you still hit her at 30-40mph, she suffers head injuries and is taken to hospital. Because her injuries are life threatening the police do a full inspection of the crash scene and your vehicle and its load are taken away for testing. The cops look at your dash cam footage and accept that you weren't at fault.

 

That night the old lady dies. The cops weigh your van and chipper and decide that even though you were not the cause of the accident your excessive weight had an impact on the severity of the accident by increasing your stopping distance, you are charged with causing death by dangerous driving. (Yes that is what you would be charged with!) The cops tell you that the maximum sentence is 14 years, minimum 1 year. Your insurance company refuses to payout and the old lady's family sue you for everything that you have.

 

 

 

My original reply was posted tongue in cheek although I do know of two scenarios where it happened, neither are related, one involved a friend of mine who was running a mog at the time and had used it to take his compressor to a job to do some sandblasting, unfortunately it happened to be the same day customs and excise came to dip the wagons at the yard he was working, lost his mog, fine and back tax, the other was a agricultural contractor running red for gritting contracts same result impounded tractor ,fine and back tax.

 

With regard to your transit scenario, this could happen with any combination of vehicle and I don't own a transit 😉

[csservices]

This is true- but it can work out just as badly for a tractor on the same scenario you describe. I believe you need to hold records of maintenance done or proof that you have kept it in a roadworthy condition. I bet most don't and run more on the basis of when it breaks it gets fixed.

 

 

 

Tractors are also not cheep torunning on the road, you can easily lose £3-4K plus on a set of tyres, and even if running on red you'd be lucky to be doing better than 8mpg (MOgs may differ?)

 

£3k to change a wet clutch etc etc.

 

 

 

Basically in answer to the OP there is no ideal setup, just work with what you have until you get a better idea of what your work requires then go from there because everyone probably thinks their setup is the best!

 

 

Agreed, the main fallout over red diesel came about with the introduction of fast tractors, fastracs and mogs for example as people were running them as a get around to running a lorry for local haulage.

But as an ex agri contractor, I agree the costs as detailed above means there really is no saving to be made.

[IRE David H]

what about a fleet with tractors, large trucks and pickups

then you have options like king bob

[Marc]

I've thought that before.

 

I have to say though having really gone down the mog route, the mog is the answer. Front mount chipper, timber trailer behind. Very hard to beat.

 

What Unimog have you got? What's the axle loads and towing capability?

 

Our Unimogs are easy to overload. We are replacing 2 with a tractor as we tow a BotexXL trailer which is 16ton gross beyond what any of our square cans can tow.

We then have the largest square cans you can get 1850-2450L38's these are extended chassis so greater overhang past rear axle than previous L38 we ran, the chip boxs hold 18cube rammed to the gunnels that's 6ton, they weigh 6 ton dry with max gross of 12/13ton that's 6 ton front axle and depending on build spec 6/7 ton rear axle. We have taken them over the weigh bridge a few times with various chip loads and yet to exceed 12ton.

 

Max tow on the L38's is 13T with the rockinger/ringfeeder hitch max nose weight of 1 ton (twin axle trailer 6t per axle 1 ton nose =13ton). We had to alter the long rear tow plate to accept a G150 stud pattern for the coupling as the standard pattern of G135 is not longer considered fit for a trailer of 13 ton.

 

Basically what I am getting at here is many believe that Unimogs are where it's at because they can get away with murder.

 

At the end of the day disregarding the whole red diesel thing you have to set-up a Unimog correctly because if the poo hit the fan and you exceeded axle weights, which are clearly plated along with towing capacity....

[Marc]

This is one of our Unimogs, the long term goal is to go operators license and taco running on white. That way there can be no grey area, we are moving to 10 week safety checks.

 

Unimogs are okay, I would not say they rock. But many jobs this year we have got them places a normal truck wouldn't go, and with a 6 ton payload it's a reasonable whack of chip.

 

We also maintain them ourselves and believe me we are constantly fixing them.

 

We have looked at the new ones which have much greater capacities all round with 18ton instead of 13 ton tow capacity. And configurable up to 16 ton gross vehicle.

They are just mighty expensive new and hard to find in the spec we want second hand.

[Tom D]

Ours is a u20 and tows 18 ton, she'd be pretty slow towing that though, she has an 8 cube chip bin and gross weight 9.5 ton.

 

The thing you have to remember is if you gross 21 ton in at 20 ton vehicle your only 5% over. Whereas gross 4.5 ton on a 3.5 tonner and you're 30% over. And its very easy to gross 4.5 on a 3.5tonner, like I said we managed 5.6 (75% over) on our transit and we often had that van that full so we must have been over 5 ton on a regular basis.

[Marc]

Ours is a u20 and tows 18 ton, she'd be pretty slow towing that though, she has an 8 cube chip bin and gross weight 9.5 ton.

 

The thing you have to remember is if you gross 21 ton in at 20 ton vehicle your only 5% over. Whereas gross 4.5 ton on a 3.5 tonner and you're 30% over. And its very easy to gross 4.5 on a 3.5tonner, like I said we managed 5.6 (75% over) on our transit and we often had that van that full so we must have been over 5 ton on a regular basis.

 

We can't put a PUH on the L38's so limited to 13ton center axle trailer.

 

At least with the newer Unimogs you have that option so either 13ton center axle or 18ton Ag trailer 13 ton on the trailer axles and 5 ton on the hitch I guess.

 

Regarding the overloading it's a fair point to consider, our Isuzu as far as I can make out is a 5.5ton vehicle plated to 3.5ton in the UK which kind of makes it pointless as the legal payload with 2 guys and gear is 700kg on a short wheel base because of plated weight, it's not like the vehicle is not built to take more.

 

We looked at other builds on the Isuzu similar to what some of the larger companies run but when we discovered they actually had no payload... makes you wonder if the employers at these companies know they are provided with vehicles that have to carry capacity. These are large concerns that we all compete against. But we have been here before and done the whole overloaded thing to death, we can only bury our heads in the sand for so long.

 

I am currently battling it out with our Unimog supplier regarding the tow bars provided which were a total joke the frightening thing is if it's Ag you can get away with murder quite literally.

[TIMON]

Therein lies the real question at the heart of this issue. Quote for work cheaper because you run an illegal 3.5t set up and circumnavigate the costs of a legal (bigger) set up. OR bite the bullet by training drivers with HGV and towing licences, get an OPS licence and bigger truck and hope that the increased capacity and efficiency pays off.

We all know that until the authorities have a serious crackdown on overloading in the ARB industry things will remain as they are and this debate will run and run.

We should all agree that no serious Treeworks can be done in a 3.5t while remaining legal unless all your work consists of 0.5m reductions [emoji857]

 

 

Timon.

[Marc]

Therein lies the real question at the heart of this issue. Quote for work cheaper because you run an illegal 3.5t set up and circumnavigate the costs of a legal (bigger) set up. OR bite the bullet by training drivers with HGV and towing licences, get an OPS licence and bigger truck and hope that the increased capacity and efficiency pays off.

We all know that until the authorities have a serious crackdown on overloading in the ARB industry things will remain as they are and this debate will run and run.

We should all agree that no serious Treeworks can be done in a 3.5t while remaining legal unless all your work consists of 0.5m reductions [emoji857]

 

 

Timon.

 

Just because we have bigger kit doesn't mean we can be more expensive than someone with smaller kit, the opposite in fact we are the same price and sometimes cheaper, only difference is we can do it quicker and more of the bigger jobs in a week/month.

A recent job we didn't get a look in on pricing took a local contracter one week to complete, we would of been half the price and had it completed in two days.

 

You don't double your price you double your workload and all the headache that comes with it.

 

We have another contractor near us who has mega kit, we can't touch him on price or productivity we are simply not efficient enough.

[chopper brown]

Really good thread and interesting to read so I thought I'd post a pic of my truck.

 

This is not perfect but it suits me at tho moment although the the tool storage needs tweaking.

 

Not the best pic so I'll sort another sometime. Once the trailer is full the chipper goes on the back. Maybe slightly over on rear axle weight. Landy 2t unladen and chipper 1300kg.

 

Jim