The mobility that you get from a wheeled excavator was behind the decision by Queensland’s Sticky Group to buy a new Takeuchi TB295W excavator for a road construction job — a 6km stretch of ring-road in Townsville.
“We had a new Takeuchi 8 tonne excavator which was being used on work and around Brisbane on the clean-up works after last year’s cyclone,” company owner ‘Sticky’ says.
“While this is a great machine, we realised that a wheeled excavator would be able to carry out the road construction jobs so much faster, so we purchased a Takeuchi TB295W wheeled excavator to give us the mobility needed to move faster and a lot more efficiently.”
Sticky says it took them little time to get used to operating a wheeled excavator, “But after a few days we didn’t even bother to lower the stabiliser legs as we found we could travel, scoop up and swing the boom around quite easily.
“It was a different experience, but it’s only a matter of getting used to some different techniques.”
Sticky says he sees the Takeuchi TB295W being used in a range of road works, such as clearing drains and, with a slasher/mulcher head on the boom, grooming roadside vegetation.
“With the machine’s extra reach, we know we’ll be able to take on considerably more work,” he adds.
“As an accredited rail contractor, another potential use of the machine is to add a Hi-Rail attachment for our railway work,” Sticky says. “Basically, for our purposes we are finding the TB295W presents many more options and fewer restrictions than a tracked machine.”
Sticky’s introduction to Takeuchi came when he bought a used 8-tonne TB80FR excavator.
“Its previous owners had carried out some modifications and there was plenty of evidence it had a hard life,” he says. “Despite the machine’s history I was very happy with its power and overall strength.”