Tom D
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Everything posted by Tom D
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Nothing's perfect, but that would be a very good way of staying legal. Plus the 4x4 capabilities would allow you to get into more places, especially if chipping onto the floor. And a decent chip bin trailer could give you an 8 cube capacity and still be legal.
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I've heard a few stories like that, but if you go hauling another machine on a low loader you are asking for trouble. I have seen plenty doing it, especially with excavators. It's very hard to justify your ag/forestry use when hauling plant. Timber or chip, whilst still sketchy is less blatantly dodgy. Hauliers hate tractors hauling plant, they also aren't keen on 4x4's hauling plant either. I suspect the RHA are always pushing for more penalties on tractors hauling and also non tacho'ed 4x4's hauling long distance. The thing is hauling with a tractor / mog within its weight limit is less dangerous than running an overloaded van.
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I don't know why you'd get greif for a tractor and trailer if you weren't overloaded. I think the comments in this thread and the other one on transit weights shows that most transits are not 'marginally overloaded'. Marginally overloaded might be 3.8 ton, which would be 2.5-3 cube. Most transits are running way over that. Look at it in percentage terms, a 44 tonner at 45 ton is not really seriously over but a 3.5 tonnner at 4.5 is, and many transits, mine included will be 5.5 when full.
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I'll agree with that Mark. It's pretty hard to stay 100%legal in this game. The real question is the moral argument. If you break the law by running massively overloaded you are potentially dangerous. If you run your tractor on red and use it to pick up Mrs miggin's tree you're breaking the law but not endangering anyone else.
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Is that a mewp behind the mog?
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You still got the Valtra and botex John?
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Well there you go. I can run an 9 man arb approved team with £250k's worth of kit and our annual costs are about £300k.. The private sector is way cheaper. Imagine if all our LA's subbed out all their manual work, roads, refuse, housing... the deficit would be gone overnight.
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If the guys are sitting around drinking tea, get them paid off FFS! LA's are shutting libraries and public toilets and social care is massively underfunded, the money could be well spent elsewhere. It costs an LA at least £300k a year to run a full time 4 man arb squad (i know it sounds a lot but I have that from a senior LA manager). My local council got rid of their arb squad years ago and just use private contractors when they need to. It must have saved them a fortune.
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These practices are wrong on so many levels. The TPO thing just has to be illegal in some way, its certainly not fair.
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you don't need a torque wrench for that, Just use a breaker bar. Tighten them with a 1' long ratchet or just grip down on the breaker bar and pull as tight as you can. If you use the full length of the breaker you may shear them.
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Surely that can't be true! If it is I'd go straight to the papers.
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What model do you have?
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What is the schliesing 235 like? I'm not interested in reliability, (I know they're good) I want to know purely on chipping performance how they compare to the tw 190/280 the Forst ST8, Jensen 8" GM 8" etc. Just performance, not price or anything else. What pulls brash in the best?
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I sharpened mine today, haven't tried it yet.. hopefully it's made a difference.
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Nice job, we haven't had one like that for a while, they're good when you get them.
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The discs are ok but chip quality is poor IME. They do last well though..
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That's the thing with the forsts, the performance is so good. Andrew was complaining today that the tp200 on the mog doesn't pull brash in as well as the ST8. It doesn't, I could see that too.
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Which, the transit or the mog? Mark, I'm with you on the 18 tonner thing, but I have been well surprised by the agility of our little mog. It is shorter than the transit, no wider and it has a better turning circle. To be clear the mog is shorter than the transit and the mog with chipper is a lot shorter than the transit and chipper. Even when I used to drive the big 1750 with the monster bandit up front it was surprising where you could get that. As to the economics, the mog does the work of 2 vehicles and uses twice the fuel of the transit, so not much difference there. A decent mog and chipper might be £50k but a new transit and chipper will cost you that by the time you have put an arb body and tool box on it. Then there's the depreciation, after a few years the transit is worth next to nothing, as I'm just finding out, whereas mogs hold their value really well. Even 30 year old mogs make good money.
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i,ve been running overloaded vans for 15 years or so, I hadn't realised just how overloaded they were. I thought our transit full to the brim would be a ton over max, turns out it was 2.1 over. Plus it had 1.2 ton of chipper behind it too, 6.8 gross. Thats quite a lot for those little transit brakes to deal with. Like Mark says, there's little between the 3.5's and the OL and all the hassle. Its a hard call to go for anything bigger, even though staying at 3.5 means your overloaded all the time.
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I've been pulled over a few times but never weighed, up here they seem more interested in tyres and lights etc. I think as you get older and have kids your attitude to risk changes. I think a lot about my own kids traveling to school, and all the idiots I see on the roads, sends a shiver down my spine. The fact is many of our 3.5 chip trucks can easily be 2 ton overweight, ours was 2.1 over recently, that was the day I decided to get the mog. Remember that 10 wheeler that ran away on a hill and crashed a while back killing people because it was defective. The owners went to jail I think, not the driver. So if you let employees drive your transit and they get pulled or worse have a smash, you could be held liable.
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It's funny when people get so worried by towing over 750kg on a post 97 license, and yet as evidenced by this thread and the other one on transit weights they are happy to drive round a ton overweight. The 750kg thing has spawned a whole range of chippers in that class, so they must be popular. Why care so much about a licensing issue and yet not care at all about a weight issue? Driving with the wrong license is not going to kill anyone, but being 30% overloaded could.
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Don't use the box to gear it up.just get a straight right angle box, an old flail will have one, then gear it up using belts once you've turned the corner.
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Perhaps it's time the AA teamed up with ISO to offer a package of both? We'd be very interested in that....
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Not bad, I bet that ring weighs more than she does..
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What I'm getting at is that if you want to leave the 3.5 behind to stay legal the 7.5 will only be legal with a 3.5 sized chip box. Virtually every 3.5 is well overloaded but if you go 7.5 you can carry the same amount legally. If you get a 7.5 because it holds more chip than the 3.5 you're just making the problem worse by running an even heavier overloaded vehicle. I have often thought that a grain trailer with a chipper mounted on an extended drawbar would be a handy thing but they have never really taken off.
