The evolution of attachment
manufacturers has arrived to the point where we now have very
high-quality, long-lasting, durable products. In the past if an
attachment had a problem, the whole machine had a problem.
—Mike
Murphy, Manager, Working Gear, Komatsu America
Application
“We have turned
all of our major pieces of equipment, from skid-steers to our big
excavators, into what we call utility equipment,” says Bob
George, vice president of Operations in the Heavy Division for Mosites
Construction Co. in Pittsburg, PA. In business since 1959, Mosites
Construction has evolved into three separate divisions: a Building
Division, which handles projects such as parking garages and sports
centers; a Development Division, concentrating on malls and commercial
office complexes; and the Heavy Division, which builds bridges,
tunnels, and roads.
“With three divisions,
we have to be versatile,” says George. “We move the
equipment around, and to do that we often buy on a smaller scale.
When we buy a dozer, for example, instead of a D10 we buy two D6s.
That way we can use the smaller machines individually at smaller
sites, and instead of dedicating one big dozer on bigger jobs, we
use the two smaller ones in tandem.”
“It’s a
lot easier to move an attachment around than a machine,” says
Devin Yankey, superintendent for Wise Guys Inc. in Manassas, VA,
which does both residential and commercial construction and maintains
a fleet that includes excavators and loaders, rubber-tire backhoes
and loaders, 50 skid-steers, 11 mini excavators, and a host of attachments.
“You buy one machine
and you can use it for 20 to 30 different jobs,” says Clay
Campbell, territory manager for James River Equipment in Manassas,
a John Deere dealer. “We tell people to look at adding additional
attachments before they add another machine.”
Jim Fost, sales coordinator
for Highway Equipment Co. in Zelienople, PA, agrees. “With
the correct use of attachments, you don’t have to have as
many pieces of equipment on a job—or as many people in the
crew. A quick coupler costs roughly $4,000 to $6,000, and you can
change a bucket in less than a minute, as opposed to stopping a
machine and having two men banging out pins.”
“We’ve seen
a 40% increase in coupler sales over the course of the last 12 months,”
says Dale DeWeese, national sales manager for Werk-Brau Co. Inc.
in Findlay, OH. “As fuel prices continue to rise and the cost
of aggregate and raw material continues to increase, contractors
will begin to see that they need to maximize the effectiveness of
their machines to get a return on their investment. You can’t
tie a piece of equipment up with one attachment.”
“I started selling
skid-steers about 15 years ago, and I’d tell people we had
50-some different attachments for that machine,” says Cyd
Gyug, who heads up compact equipment sales at Brandt Tractor Ltd.
in Edmonton, BC, the largest privately held John Deere dealership
in the world. “Today I’d be lying if I didn’t
tell you there’re over 400 different attachments. It’s
like a Swiss Army knife.”
At Komatsu, Mike Murphy
offers further insight on the versatility of attachments. “Equipment
costs have risen faster than the value of the work contractors do.
This has forced them to look for ways to get more utilization out
of their base machines.” Murphy also points out that attachments
cut down on subcontracting, which reduces expenses and improves
productivity.
The secret to making
the most of attachments? The right match between product, job, and
environment.
Buy Versus Rent
Murphy advises that contractors look three years ahead
when considering attachments because it’s easier and less
costly to equip a machine with additional hydraulics at the factory
than wait until you’re suddenly faced with connecting an attachment.
“You can attach
a dollar value to the ability to change buckets,” says Murphy.
“It’s to the benefit of a pipeline contractor, for example,
that when he gets down to the bottom of a trench where he wants
to put in bedding material, he’ll want a smaller trench. The
easier it is to change a bucket so he can make the last couple of
passes with a smaller bucket, the more he will minimize the amount
of bedding material he has to use, which saves him money.
“It’s a
competitive world and you don’t want to overspend, but you
don’t want to be stuck without what you need. A hydraulic
kit and a quick coupler is money well spent. On a 20-ton machine,
that’s about 10% of the value. The analogy is if you spend
$30,000 on a new car, you may wonder about spending an additional
$1,500 to $2,000 on a GPS. The answer is the expense is hard to
swallow until you’ve tried it.”
At Case Construction
Equipment, NA, Frank Raczon tells contractors if the attachment
will pay for itself in less than 12 months they’re probably
better off buying. On the other hand, Raczon points out that renting
an attachment relieves them of having to deal with long-term storage
and insurance, maintenance, and service. Most large contractors
we spoke to don’t rent, even to try out an attachment. They
negotiate with their dealer to do a test run. But more likely than
not they’ve done their homework and aren’t on a fishing
expedition.
At Highway Construction
Co., Fost thinks the market is still split about 60-40, buy over
rent. “If you have the money, buy. It’s like having
a jack or a spare tire. You may not need it every day, but when
you do need it, it better be there. You never know when you’re
going to hit rock.”
In the compact market,
Bruce Anderson, sales manager and CEAttachments specialist at MDMA
Equipment, a Gehl dealership in Menomonie, WI, suggests that for
some customers renting can help with decision-making. “Even
though we might tell them differently, they might think they need
an $8,000 landscape rake. Then they rent it and find out that for
the kind of work they’re doing, they can get by with a leveler.
“Renting is also
sometimes preferable for tax purposes—they can write off 100%
of a rental payment. So it relates to the individual company’s
profile.”
At Ellen Equipment,
a Case dealer in Aurora, CO, Account Manager Steve Corning reports
that a lot of his customers buy their attachments with the machine.
Banks don’t look favorably on financing individual attachments,
says Corning, because their value depreciates too quickly. On the
other hand, Kevin Overley, vice president of Aurora-based commercial
landscape contractors Landtech Contractors Inc., says most of his
company’s attachments were purchased after market. “There’s
no set way we make decisions,” says Overley. “If it’s
going to make us quicker and more productive, we’ll look into
using a particular attachment. A lot of what we buy comes through
word of mouth. The idea is to be open to this kind of information
as it comes along.
“At the end of
the year we’ll have a budget meeting where all our supervisors
come in with a wish list. We take that list and decide among us
what we think will really help production, plus what we need right
now and what can wait. We don’t really put a pencil to it.
It’s more that if it will help in our operations and reduce
labor costs, we’ll buy it.”
Overley says attachments
have helped Landtech be competitive in its bidding. Once a new attachment
is on the job, the company tracks savings. “We’ll go
out in the field and time it to check on actual production. We check
how long it took to do a job using the new attachment versus the
way we used to do it, and then we’ll apply this to our bidding
rates.”
Bruce Lambert at Taul
Equipment LLC in Amelia, OH, suggests that if you’re going
to rent, rent from a dealer. You’re less likely to be victimized
by mechanical failures and other problems associated with the aging
or heavily used equipment you may find in a rental yard.
Customize
Although the array of available attachments is extensive,
everyone agrees the key to getting what you want is thinking creatively.
Faced with a $40 million hard rock tunneling job, Mosites Construction
put together a specialized grinder. “Allied Hammer provided
the hydraulics for an alpine foist we bought for one of our large
excavators,” says George, “and Highway Equipment Company
installed it so the attachment would oscillate 90 degrees in addition
to the regular up-and-down, which allowed us to get at the sides
of the tunnel. With this we’ve developed what’s known
locally as the Mosites Tunneling Method, which is faster than blasting
with dynamite or using miners, which are slow and arduous.”
George says the customized attachment paid for itself “50
to 100 times over” on the tunnel job, and the company regularly
uses it on public works projects such as re-facing concrete on locks
and dams for the Army Corps of Engineers.
 |
PHOTO: ALLIED CONSTRUCTION |
| Rammer in-Series hydraulic impact hammer |
In the compact market,
Brandt Tractor developed a specialized grapple bucket with a 6-inch-thick
rubber edge for a Canadian paper recycler. “The tractor never
goes outside, and the idea is to keep the bucket from busting up
the concrete floor where the paper is sorted,” says Gyug.
“When the rubber wears out, we replace it.”
Typically job specific,
customized attachments can also be inspired by the environment,
like the push-pole Brandt Tractor developed for local contractors
who use it to backfill in residential construction. “It’s
like a motor grader blade about 6 to 8 inches high and about 14
to 20 inches wide with a pole—a four-by-four beam with another
beam inside it, with a hook attachment frame on it,” says
Gyug. “When a contractor gets ahead of himself and puts a
deck on the house before the dirt’s been brought in, he can
hook onto this thing and use it to backfill under the deck.
“In Edmonton we
sell a lot of pole augers with effectively a boom attached to them
so the operator can reach down deeper in the soil. In Edmonton they’re
putting in 9-foot holes and the machine can’t pull it out.
In Calgary our customers use the same attachment to haul trees.
They put their chains on and carry trees in their buckets with the
same pole we sell in Edmonton to extend an auger.”
DeWeese describes a
rake Werk-Brau designed to be used with a Kubota coupler and a Werk-Brau
hydraulic thumb for land clearing. “It costs 30% less than
a grapple,” says DeWeese, “and can be on and off in
a matter of seconds versus assembling a grapple.”
Couplers
George reports that all the excavators at Mosites Construction,
from 7,000 up to 80,000 pounds, are equipped with quick couplers
to facilitate multitasking. Commonly used attachments include hydraulic
hammers, grinders and frost rippers (Werk-Brau makes these), and
various lifting devices. “We also try to make our loaders
versatile with forks and buckets and grapples and crane fronts.”
At Kokosing Construction
Co. in Fredericktown, OH, Maintenance Planner Brad Melcher says
his company’s also set up its excavators to handle more than
one attachment. “That way if conditions change, we don’t
have to move in another machine.”
At MDMA Equipment Inc.
Anderson reminds contractors they can buy an adapter for compact
tractor loaders (from CEAttachments, for one) that will adapt the
loader to fit other machine attachments. “Of the last four
compact tractors we sold, four of them had the skid loader adapter
plate. One customer has both machines so he can use the skid loader
bucket or posthole auger on either machine.”
Computers
Mosites Construction has a customized computer system
that tracks equipment for billing and logistics plus maintenance
and service. Wise Guys does the same, tracking machine and attachment
locations and maintenance and billing. Both systems are customized,
and both companies emphasize that computerized tracking and scheduling
is key to managing attachments effectively.
Dealers
The trick is to find someone who is willing to work with
you, has good relationships with attachment manufacturers, and has
an open mind. “I try to learn as much as I can about our John
Deere products,” says Campbell, “so when a customer
needs to match an attachment to a machine, I can figure out the
right machine and the right attachment for his job site. I’m
not just a salesman. I’m a problem-solver.”
A good dealer compensates
for what you don’t know, says Gyug. “You really have
to quiz your customers. The biggest mistake is they want something
that is overkill—too big or not really suitable. You also
have to know the geography of where they’re operating—that
is, the ground and soil conditions. And hydraulics—people
forget to ask about hydraulic flow and pressure. With some attachments
there are high-flow and low-flow models. Production is less with
the low-flow versions, but they’re out there.”
But don’t expect
a dealer to do what you should be doing. “You’ve got
to know your company,” says George. “You’re got
to be clear about what you’re doing now and how you’re
going to grow. We put our ideas out to our dealer, who works with
us to get a solution for what we need.”
Favorites
Bob George: “Compacting pieces for ditches, trenches,
and on slopes where you can’t work people. It makes the work
a lot safer, more productive, and profitable, which are the three
things we’re looking for. Grapples are important in demolition
work, including excavator buckets with thumbs. If I want to dig
with the machine and do other things with it, I’ll use the
one with the thumb on it. But if I’m just out there to pick
up boulders and rocks and debris, the big grapple is just astronomical
as far as production goes.” To handle pipes, Mosites Construction
puts hook attachments on its crawler cranes.
Yankey at Wise Guys:
“Our biggest help is the clearing bucket, and if we didn’t
have these hydraulic hammers, we wouldn’t be where we are
right now. We’d either be renting or subbing it out, waiting,
and then worrying about whether the contractor is going to do the
job right or not. Typically we use the hydraulic hammers on a John
Deere 200LC excavator. For a house or foundation we take two or
three different-size buckets with us, a 3-foot-wide bucket for the
foundation, a 2-foot-wide for drain field trenches. Some of our
track loaders have grapple hooks and root rakes. We have snow blades
on skid-steers, rock crushers for excavators.”
Gyug: “On compact
machines this time of year [winter] we see buckets and dozer blades
[which are used for light grading when the weather clears] and breakers
to bust the frost apart [used on concrete and rock during the regular
season]. Always augers and pallet forks and more grapple buckets
and tine grapples.
“We sell quite
a few pickup sweepers because contractors get fined if they bring
out mud from their construction site. What we’re selling that
we never sold much of before is breakers on small excavators. And
I haven’t sold a solid dozer blade for a long time. They’re
brutal on tractors as well as operators.”
Campbell: “I don’t
think I’ve sold a single skid-steer loader this year that
I haven’t sold a set of pallet forks with. I’ve had
some builders who said they don’t need a machine, and I’ve
talked them into taking a skid-steer out to a home site and now
they have skid-steers and probably 10 different kinds of attachments—pallet
forks to lift bricks and lumber and sheet rock off the truck, buckets
to spread stone and clean up around the job site, and rakes to pick
up debris and fine grade the yard and get it ready for seed.”
Lambert: “With
compact equipment, hydraulic tools can be used off the auxiliary
hydraulics on a skid loader—a hydraulic pump, for example,
that you can bring in on a truck, set next to the loader, and get
the job done without having to move in a specialized piece of equipment
like a big gas- or propane-powered pump.”
Kevin Overley: “We
have a fleet of nearly 20 skid-steers, and our operators like the
small attachments they can switch around easily. There are four
that usually go with them on a job, a bucket, a tiller [Easy Grader],
a tree spade, and pallet forks. They can switch the attachments
quickly to do a little bit of grading, some digging, some tilling,
whatever they have to do. We also use drag graders, both with tractors
and skid-steers. And we’ve purchased some Polaris 700 ATVs
[Polaris Industries], which we also use with drag chains for grading
very small areas. In the winter we use the ATVs for snow removal;
during the landscaping season we use the plow attachment for light
grading.”
Host Machine
Campbell: “We see people buying mostly for skid-steer
loaders and mini wheel loaders. This year we’ve seen an increase
in mini excavators. We’ve also been selling a lot of hammers
and thumbs and augers for mini excavators. Around here that might
be because things are getting built up and they can no longer fit
their rubber-tire backhoes in spots where they used to. Mini excavators
can work around townhouses and in developments where they’re
building houses close together. The John Deere mini excavator has
got that zero turn so the counterweight never leaves the track.”
Maintenance
Wise Guys keeps eight or nine mechanics on the road. The
mechanics check the hydraulic lines, things like bucket teeth. “We
keep our attachments for a couple of years,” says Yankey,
“and then trade them in on new—particularly the hydraulic
rams, which wear out quick. We keep the buckets for a year and replace
the teeth. We have a full welding shop that does custom work such
as adding fingers and more teeth. We made a special thumb for our
clearing bucket that is almost like a finger. You can grab logs
with it and reach way out, and the log won’t roll out of the
bucket. When James River Equipment sells a piece of equipment to
another company, they bring it over here and we put the thumb on.”
 |
PHOTO: JOHN DEERE |
| The new John Deere Worksite Pro roller levels make grading, leveling, and contouring with detail control a breeze for skid-steer operators. |
Melcher: “At Kokosing
we do an annual inspection of all our couplers. We check on wear
in the open jaw area. We don’t replace couplers. They may
run 5,000 hours, and then we rebuild them. We try to keep everything
the same manufacturer. That way you simplify what you stock. And
since the equipment has things in common, our mechanics are familiar
with it, which makes it easier to work on. We use Werk-Brau couplers,
exclusively because of their design and workability. We worked with
them to help design a coupler that has a lifting eye in the center.
It’s easier to pick off the center line than off the side.
You don’t twist anything.
“We don’t
schedule maintenance. It’s strictly based on breakdown. If
it fails, we take it apart, and if it’s damaged beyond what
it’s going to cost us to buy a new one, we buy a new one.
Otherwise we fix it and send it back out again. But we fix it right;
it’s not a matter of patching it and hoping for the best.”
Overley says Landtech
Contractors sends worn-out attachments to an auction house and buys
something “newer or different. We see buying attachments as
just part of doing business.”
Mistakes
The biggest question from a salesman’s point of
view, says Anderson, is with auxiliary hydraulics: “the mismatch
between the size of the machine they’re planning to put the
attachment on and how much flow they have. The three big questions
are what size machine do you have, what’s the brand, and what
type of job are you trying to do with it—what you’re
trying to get at is hydraulic performance and lift capacity.”
“It’s easy
to overlook something when you’re using an attachment you
don’t use on a regular basis,” says Lambert. “Stump
grinders, for example. There are a variety of them out there, and
some require high-flow hydraulics. Others don’t. But you have
to know which is which.
“We had a customer
who wanted a wider trench than the attachment was capable of. And
he wanted it to trench faster than what we knew it was capable of
doing. We tell our customers when they have unrealistic expectations,
but sometimes they just have to experience that for themselves.”
Lambert cautions that
if contactors don’t rent regularly, they might not know that
the performance can be affected by the quality of the hydraulic
fluid in the last piece of equipment the attachment was used with.
Safety
Fost: “With a hydraulic coupler you must cycle it;
you must keep dirt and mud out of it. You must match the correct
attachment to the machine. You have to grease on a daily basis.”
The number-one safety
tip from Werk-Brau is read the manual, front to back—and more
than once. “One of the easiest safety mistakes,” says
DeWeese, “is partially engaging a bucket, especially if it’s
a hydraulic coupler that’s activated from the cab. We offer
a fully integrated positive lock safety feature across all of our
couplers, which means a manual locking system. The coupler has to
be 100% engaged before the lock pin can be put in.”
DeWeese also worries
that with multi-pin grabbers becoming more and more common on machines,
operators will fall into the habit of trying to pick up an attachment
the coupler wasn’t designed to accommodate. “We’ve
looked at multi-pin grabbers for several years, and we’ve
determined that there are too many opportunities for errors.”
“We’ve taken
all of our couplers, no matter whose coupler it is,” says
Melcher, “and taken out any non-positive locks and put a safety
pin in. Gravity holds some of them in place, but that’s not
100% positive. Adding a safety pin that’s a positive lock
we don’t have to worry about anything happening.”
OSHA has been paying
attention to accidents involving quick couplers, citing 15 fatalities
since it began tracking in 1998. “Every failure they’ve
been able to pinpoint over the last five years has always been due
to operator negligence,” says Fost. “These are shortcut
measures, and when you take a shortcut, your tendency is to hurry
all the way around. Rather than cycle the entire machine, the operator
just picks it up one time. Often if the person is working alone,
they don’t put the locking pin in. These kinds of accidents
happen out of carelessness.”
Penelope Grenoble
O’Malley is a frequent contributor to Forester Communications
publications.
GEC
- March/April 2006 |
