Castle Hill Quarry has bought the UK’s first
Based in Cannington near the town of Bridgwater, County Somerset, south-west Egland, the company acquired the machine from the local authorised Doosan dealer,
With a bucket capacity of 4.2m3, the new wheeled loader is intended to meet a wide range of material-handling needs from loading and transporting granular material (such as sand and gravel) to industrial, mining and quarrying applications.
Stephen Ford, managing director of Castle Hill Quarry, said: “Since we purchased our first Daewoo 180LC excavator in 1991 and subsequent to the takeover by Doosan in 2005, the machines have come a long way.
“The main things that have impressed me about the latest Doosan Stage IIIB wheeled loader are its power and fuel efficiency, which are big factors in the current climate.”
The new wheeled loader is powered by the 13litre
Doosan says the wheeled loader combines the high engine power output with new ZF transmissions and several other features to minimise fuel consumption and “provide exceptional performance, ease of handling, serviceability, durability and significantly enhanced operator comfort.”
Like its predecessor, a Doosan DL400 model, the new DL420-3 wheeled loader is driven by Tasha Giblet.
“Even though it has three different power levels, Eco, Normal and Power, I generally only use it in the Eco mode because of the power it already offers, moving up to the Normal mode only for jobs such as digging into the heap,” she says.
“This obviously helps to keep fuel consumption to a minimum and it takes me noticeably less time to top up the tank at the end of every day.”
Compared to the DL400 model, a new cab design on the DL420-3 loader features improvements both outside and inside, such as the new instrument panel with integrated vehicle control unit (VCU).
Stephen Ford oversaw the purchase of the first Daewoo 180LC tracked excavator from Kellands in 1991 and the machine is still used around the quarry, which also runs a Doosan DX480LC excavator bought together with the DL400 from Kellands in 2008, which works mainly at the quarry face as a primary cutter.
Quarrying started on the site at Castle Hill in 1903, supplying the local area with aggregates. It is still delivering aggregates throughout Somerset using the company’s own fleet of trucks, and can supply anything from rock armour down to 0mm-4mm fine.
The quarry also specialises in agricultural limes, which are high in calcium carbonate and used on farms to neutralise acidity in the soil and control PH levels. These are delivered over the whole of the south-west.
