It’s one of those jobs that nobody enjoys, but for waste specialist Amey, taking out the trash is key to processing the 400,000 tonnes of waste produced by households and commercial businesses in Cambridgeshire.
When Finning News visited its 450 acre Waterbeach Waste Management Park, we met with Amey transport manager, Simon Davis to discover how its whole process has recently benefitted from a very different type of trash handler, a new Cat® 725C2 retrofitted with a 40m3 capacity lightweight skip and hydraulic tailgate.
Designed by the custom products team at Finning to move waste that can’t be recycled from its main purpose-built facilities, to its onsite landfill, the high capacity Cat 725C2 trash hauler has been put to work as a lightweight off-road hauling solution to increase the existing Amey fleet.
Talking about the solution to Finning News, Simon Davis said: “The waste we receive into Waterbeach Park comes from both commercial and municipal sources, so we are dealing with general waste, not heavy construction materials.
“Our numerous facilities onsite help us to recycle the majority of the materials we receive, but there is some residual waste that needs to go to landfill. In order to make this process as efficient and cost effective as possible, when we came to increasing our haulage fleet, we looked at the ideal equipment makeup for the task.
“We wanted a solution that was safe, robust enough to deal with the conditions onsite, high hours of use and large volumes of waste.
“So it was clear that we needed to use an articulated truck for this task, but there wasn’t an off-the-shelf solution that met our needs.
“This is why we spoke to the custom engineering team at Finning, who worked with us to design the Cat 725C2 we now have onsite. Since it has been in operation we have realised the cost and efficiency savings we expected, as the machine is much more fuel efficient than the previous models and moves up to 50% more material in each load.
“From a safety perspective, the hydraulic tailgate and automatic skip rollover cover make it much easier to transport and tip waste. For the operator, visibility is much improved with customised mirrors, all round 360° cameras and line of sight down the side of the machine, making it much easier for the load to be tipped in the correct place.”