William Hamilton & Sons has bought a Volvo L150H loading shovel to work on a new contract handling residual waste for South Lanarkshire Council and Viridor.
The new 25-tonne loading shovel has been fitted with a quick attachment bracket to help changes between the standard 4.2m³ bucket and a massive 12m³ hi-tip bucket bought for handling black-bin-waste.
The machine has also been fitted with an optional under-slung counterweight for additional stability, an RDS weigh system and Groeneveld automatic greasing.
'The main function for our new L150H will be in handling domestic waste arriving at our newly constructed facility here at Dovesdale Farm, Stonehouse,' said managing director David Hamilton.
'The operation will start up in the next couple of months where we will stockpile waste material under cover and then load it onto our fleet of 125 cubic yard walking-floor trailers for shipment to Viridor's new energy recovery plant located at Dunbar in East Lothian.
'To minimise the impact on the local environment, we are planning to deliver this during the night when the traffic on the roads is at its lowest volume'
The family-run business, which is based in Larkhall, South Lanarkshire, and can trace its roots back to the 1870s, was established by David Hamilton's great-grandfather, starting out as an agricultural contracting concern servicing local farms.
In 1985, it ventured into tipper haulage and then in 1993 acquired the current premises which have allowed William Hamilton & Sons to extend the scope of its activities that now encompass waste handling.
Besides the new venture, the company also recycles aggregates, soils and hardcore at the Dovesdale facility and stockpiles and stores road salt. The new L150H will assist an existing L120H purchased last year with screening and rehandling a wide variety of inert material.
'Last year, we took a L150H on demonstration and were very impressed with the machine but we ended up opting for the slightly smaller L120H,' added David.
'The machine has lived up to our expectations and encouraged us to choose the L150H for our new rehandling project. We've been operating Volvo loading shovels since the early 1990s and they have certainly proved to be highly reliable, popular with our operators and command a good residual value when it's time to change them out. In addition, the support we get from the local customer support centre is more than satisfactory'
The new 25-tonne loading shovel features a 13-litre stage-IV final engine developing 300hp in a relatively low rpm range of between 1,300 and 1,400 rpm.
The L150H also benefits from Volvo designed and manufactured driveline components including Optishift with torque converter lock-up and reverse-by-braking feature ' all designed to offer fuel savings on every shift.
Further fuel savings are produced by the Volvo Eco-pedal which encourages the operator to run the machine at its optimum rpm in the engine's torque curve.
The new loading shovel has been supplied with a Volvo Blue Service Agreement meaning that the machines will be serviced at the correct intervals by Volvo-trained service engineers using genuine Volvo parts. The latest arrival also joins a couple of smaller L90 models from the F & G series.
The company currently operating through four trading divisions which include bulk haulage, road sweeping, aggregates, soils and salt suppliers as well as landfill and now domestic waste handling. The company runs more than 70 lorries to service these divisions.
