[ NEWS ]
Bell Equipment Sales Representative, Greg McClelland with Annari and Dana Schutte
of RDA Plant Hire.
Dana says. “We’ve done calculations
comparing the return on investment of a
TLB to larger equipment and the TLB
comes out tops every time, whether you
use it on a mine or in a garden.”
RDA Plant Hire now owns seven Bell
315 TLBs, all of them with 4x4 traction,
and all but one was bought new. “We’ve
found Bell Finance a very handy option
to use as they understand our market
where you have to act quickly at times
to negate the danger of losing a
contract,” he adds. “We prefer paying a
healthy deposit and monthly
installments over a short term to fit in
with the length of our contracts.”
By mid-2014, demands from mining
clients saw RDA Plant Hire acquire a
wheeled loader to load its long-haul
side-tipper trucks, deployed by the
company’s transport side. “Because of
the support and attention we’d enjoyed
from both Greg McClelland on the sales
side and Ben Spangenberg on the
product support side, which made us as
a small company feel like a big company,
we had no hesitation in buying a new
Bell L2106E Wheeled Loader for a
contract with an alloys producer near
Witbank,” Dana says. “The contract called
for around-the-clock production and
when we encountered a problem on
the new machine’s differential, Bell
Equipment was very quic k to assist us
with a loan machine to maintain
our production.”
Although the new Bell L2106E
wheel loader was repaired, RDA Plant
Hire bought the Bell L2106D loan
machine as well to use as a standby.
A subsequent short contract on a
manganese mine saw the company
buy two larger Bell L2606E machines
fitted with slightly smaller buckets for
the heavier loads. These two machines
now work in tandem on a gold mine’s
RDA Plant Hire owns seven
Bell 4x4 TLBs and enjoys
the return on investment
that these versatile
workhorses deliver.
RDA Plant Hire has a fleet of five Bell wheeled
loaders with the larger L2606E machines
delivering between fuel consumption figures of
between 17 and 18 litres per hour depending on
the workload.
waste dump where the old waste
material is reprocessed.
“In buying the two bigger Bell L2606E
machines we almost burnt our fingers
when a supposedly long contract was
cut short but Bell Finance’s
understanding of our situation saw us
through,” Dana says. “Our Bell wheeled
loader fleet has now increased to five
machines and this has added a new
dimension to our services and has grown
our confidence in tendering for more
ambitious work.”
Most of RDA Plant Hire’s contract
work is done on dry rates but, as an
owner, Dana says they are very conscious
of their machines’ fuel consumption for
obvious reasons. Consumption figures
vary with workloads but figures of 17 to
18 litres an hour for the Bell L2606E, 14
litres for the Bell L2106E and five to
seven litres an hour for the Bell 315 TLBs
all bring clients back for more given high
mechanical availabilities brought about
by diligent preventative maintenance
schedules.
“Our operators believe they
own the machines they operate,
and that makes a big difference
for us,” Dana says. “Added to that is
the solid technical support we can
rely on from Bell Equipment, which
gives us the confidence we need to
keep working in a market filled with
many challenges.”
APRIL 2017 | HIRE SA | 17