Yair...had to grin at a comment there about tandem pushing. I was a fitter/spare operator and what all on a nice little dirt job a long time ago. The dirt boss was a Texan and he had a bee in his bonnet about tandem pushing. We had a motely mix of subbies with Cats and Wabcos, one bloke had a couple of Green Lizards and there was an Allis chalmers some thing to make life interesting.
It was still the days of cable blade and stick shift and I was pushing with an Allis twenty one which are a bit more nimble than the common or garden variety D8's they were using for pushcats. Tex insisted that that I be tag man for this tandem pushing caper.
They built push blocks for the D8 rippers and Tex gave us the drum on tandem pushing complete with diagrams on the wall.
It worked okay I suppose but I still think the concept is B/S. I pointed out after the first day they would have got more production if the toolbox session had been on how to set an alarm clock than than how to tandem push a scoop...two of the twenty ones had idled for forty minutes on the sevice pad waiting for jockeys.
If a job has been bid that tight that a few seconds per load is going to make any difference to the bottom line I think the outfit should stick to landscaping with a wheeling can...that way they won't get into too much trouble.
It,s interesting you mention the topic of tandem pushing in "Australia" Untill the advent of things like youtube i had not understood the advantages of cushion blades and just brushed them off as a US only type thing because in over 30 years of being around earthmoving in Au i had never seen one. The australian way and i have seen this with many contractors is to have the scraper come into the cut skimming the bowl getting a couple of free cubes and keeping things fairly tidy and then stop and wait for the dozer to tag up.
Twin power P/P usually hook up on the run and i want you to hold that thought for a minute.
After seeing many vids on Youtube (primarily posted by Ken on his SoCal site) i did not see 1 single power open bowl scraper stopped waiting for a dozer (AU style) to get to it and 99% of the dozers pushing had cushion blades and some set up with 2 dozers double pushing. As with trucks scrapers do not make money when they are not moving dirt from A to B, the inherant advantage with scrapers is they are on the move while loading where as trucks are sitting still so the more you can keep the cycle ticking the better you are.
Now also while trawling through youtube it seems the French are big scraper operators as well and a number of videos show at least 6 - 10 different companies all using cushion blade equipped D10,s with 31,s but the difference to the US style is they tag up in what i would describe as Australian style and when you watch it there seems to be little advantage to having the cushion blade as compared to Australian contarctors (with SU blades) and even less when compared to how it is used in the US (Primarily California, the scraper capital of the world)
The US style as i will call it see,s the scraper and dozer tagging up on the move, just like you would see pushpulls as mentioned earlier and when you watch it a few times the advantage is as obvious as the nose on your face, try this video for a good example of it:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Gavin84w?feature=mhum#p/f/140/7VhqBXwmzLs
I truely believe that if an Australian contractor adopted the Californian style (think of it as the back scraper in a PP set up being the dozer) they would be moving dirt quantities far in excess of what they do today but i think there are a couple of fears that the tractors versatility is compromised with it having a cushion blade along with a "thats how we have always done it" attitude that stops this concept from getting over the line.
Great to hear peoples thoughts from other parts of the world on this and to me this is what forums are all about as opposed to some that just turn into pi$$ing contests
