Cement truck question.

[thejdman04]

Front discharge fwd's or oshkosh's are all you see anymore. No real reason not to use themm drive up there controlt he chute, move the truck etc all by yourself. There the roughest riding darn trucks ever. (for the ose of you dont know, they sit on rubber blocks. Most of the time the blocks get warn the bolts get tightened and its steel on steel. Nothing fun about a cconcrete truck, they are pigs to manuver(dont turn well) ride rough, dont heat or cool worth anything. The reason they use rubber suspension is because the barrel really isnt attached to the truck by anything practically speaking, it sits in some rollers at the bottom and thats about it. Many times there has been drums lost. The "semi" trailered concrete trucks are jsut that for feedin pump trucks whereyour building a parking garag w/a wide open area to get that in. Usually the semi trucks arent set up real well in the rear to get pushed out w/a dozer. The oshkosh's are set up pretty well to get pushed out of the mud hole. They are all wheel drive but real pigs in the mud

 

[Ford LT-9000]

With the building lots now in my area 95% of the foundations have to be pumped. The conrete companies with boom trucks are going steady talked to one of the guys they are working 80 hours a week. One of the companies just bought a brandnew pump truck. Some of these foundations are taking allot of concrete where it takes all day to pump. No block used here what so ever its all poured concrete its pretty much the same throughout B.C. you see readymix companies buying up new trucks soon as they are on the dealers lots. The one company here bought 5 new trucks at 150,000 to 180,000 each and looking at buying more. They have been in business since the fifties they are a good company.

The mines close to me are producing 6000 tons a week just for navvy jack to make concrete all destin for Vancouver.

 

[jimmyjack]

with in the last 10 years most every one around here runs those front unloaders, think most of them are oshkosh and advance or terex. there nice go any were on a job.:yup

 

[cunning]

question for anybody that can help

My company has a 2006 Front Discharge Cement truck that we are trying to sell. We bought a wrecked one and had it fixed. It turned out nice but we are having a hard time trying to move it. I quess my question is where would you try to market this thing to sell it

 

[95zIV]

When I worked for Griswold we had 3 smith mixers with 100 gallon tanks. Seven or eight Mcneilus mixers with 200 gallon tanks, a bunch more mcneilus with 150 gallon tanks and I think that there was 5 front discharge that where based out of northeast vermont. Here's a couple of pictures of the 200 gallon trucks.

 

[stretch]

As far as I know, all the concrete companies here in CT...Tilcon/Galasso, F&F, O&G, Aiudi, Farmington, Suzio-York Hill, Jolley, Mottes, Ansaldi...are all using Terex Advance, Oshkosh, and Mack front-discharge mixers. The only time I have seen rear-dischargers were the retired Mack B-series mixers sitting at the Suzio's quarry.

If I remember correctly, I remeber seeing a Phoenix logo on a bunch of those trucks...did they get bought out by someone?

 

[PETE379]

Cunning, you could try " the truck paper " I think your first add is free, thats how they do it on machinery trader and they post it online and in the print version. Thats a tough piece to move I would think. A lot of large companies would probably rather buy new, and smaller companies looking for a used truck may not have a 2006 in their budget. What was wrong with it?.....GOOD LUCK, Hopefully you get a buyer soon for it.

 

[Bellboy]

Lafarge is the largest readi-mix company in North America.

I think that they are the largest concrete and readymix, and aggregate suppliers in the world.

One more technicality, they are not concrete trucks, 'coz that implies that they mix the concrete themselves, from scratch in their drums, but rather ready mix trucks, that deliver ready mixed concrete from the supplier. Sorry, but that is the correct term.

 

[95zIV]

One more technicality, they are not concrete trucks, 'coz that implies that they mix the concrete themselves, from scratch in their drums, but rather ready mix trucks, that deliver ready mixed concrete from the supplier. Sorry, but that is the correct term.

Bellboy,

I don't know how much time you have around these trucks and the concrete plants that they work out of but a lot of these trucks do actually mix the concrete. The company that I worked for only had one wet batch system, which is a large drum up in the building that the sand, cement, stone, and water are dumped into and mixed there, then put it the trucks. In that case the truck does very little of the actual mixing itself. But we had 6 dry batch plants, in those the sand, cement, stone, and water get weighed up in a holding system then dumped into the truck separately. The truck then did the actual mixing. If you look on mcmeilus's site you will see that they call them concrete mixers as well.

Ray

 

[PETE379]

......And then you have a "volumetric concrete mixer".....Ron, this is the truck I was telling you about back in feb. The sand, stone, cement, water and any addmixes are all separate and the mixing is done in the auger shown in the last pic. The flow rates are adjustable so you can adjust the psi up or down in the same load. Also, you can adjust water to make the concrete wetter and also turn it down to tighten it back up again if neccesary. Mixer rated at 9 yards but with a full load on we've squeaked out about 11 1/4. We spec'd out the truck with a 12 ft. long agg. bin instead of 10 ft. so it would be easier to load with a 950. That added a little capacity and we needed the extra length in the chasis anyway to get the weight we were looking for. The water tank holds 400 gals. and the cement bin holds about 3 1/2 tons of cement. These pics are from her maiden voyage!

 

[PETE379]

The next job was a tight squeeze. The chute telescopes out for a total of about 17', or you can dump right out of the auger with whats called a pump chute (white in the pic). The last few pics we are pouring some slabs in the yard.

 

[RonG]

Nice setup.....what a shame to get it dirty.Thanks for the pics.
Regarding the concrete plants in the previous post there,the plant with the mixing drum is generally known as a central mix plant as opposed to the dry batch plants.Ron G

 

[Steve Frazier]

Pete, is Zimmerman the only manufacturer of this style rig? the two local companies with these trucks are Zimmerman too.

 

[PETE379]

Steve, they are not the only manufacturer but they are one of the pioneers in the industry. Harold Zimmerman invented the machine in the 60's. The original units wore the nameplate "daffin", thats who built them and they were called "the concrete mobile". That company was then sold off to barber greene and now those units are the ones produced by "cementech", I dont think barber greene stuck with it that long. Harold Zimmerman later designed and manufactured the second generation machines (ZIM-MIXER) somtime in the 70's. The company is still run by Harold's son in law today. I went to dinner at CONEXPO with a couple of guys from Zimmerman and got the whole history lesson, very interesting and some great stories too. My driver went to a seminar at the Zim plant for three days in the winter to learn the ins and outs of the machine. He was real impressed with the company and set up also. Volumetic mixers are also made by Elkin, Reimer and a company called quick mix.

 

[cat320]

It's a funny type of business around here anyways you don't see to many around my way. we do have the stationary ones that you put a trailer(buggy) under the mixer then take with you but even they say it's not a steady type of bussiness. what is the price tag for one of those units?
I really can't see any one not making any $$ with them there always seams to be something that you need more than a bag or two . I know I had plenty of projects that could of used one but had to do the buggy thing 1 yard at a time then they get you for another rental if you need to get another yard . I think if priced right you could clean up with them at least in the summer time . it would be a good tool if you did sidewalks just think you need to do 10', 5' 30' 4' of sidewalk make what you need no waste no wasted time waiting for a ready mix truck and dig,form and pour the same day and move on


good luck with the new truck !!

 

[Turbo21835]

I see a few of those rigs around here. Most of them are run by bridge companies. The other one I know of is run by a swimming pool company. They use it to mix all the concrete for the pool on site. Mind you this is large pools, ie schools, community centers and the like.

Ive also seen this rigs used for filling utility trenches with a product called flash fill. It is a product that is fly ash and portland cement. It sets up to the point where you can walk on it in 15 minutes, no matter how deep it is. It is incredibly strong, and since it is placed almost as a liquid, there is no possibility for settlement. Its tough stuff to dig through, but you can do a utility crossing, fill it with flash fill, and pave it in a matter of hours.

 

[PETE379]

Thanks guys, around here a lot of pool companies and municipalities use these trucks so they can pour exactly what they need when they need it. Large or small quantities are always available without calling sombody for a specific amount. In bridge and patching work they use them because the concrete is always fresh, you never get a hot load thats been in the barrel from sitting on the job or in traffic for that matter if your working far away from a plant. For me, its away to service all my customers needs without having another plant. Plus I can give them exactly what they need. The ZIM unit cost about 85,000 and the Pete chassis its sitting on was about 117,000. The other thing we needed was a cement silo. The one we got holds about two trailer loads of cement. The other alternative is to load it from bags. Which we did until the silo came, that wasnt fun. The Silo cost about 25,000 dollars. The truck can pull in and get loaded in about 20 min total for sand, stone, cement and water so turnaround time isnt to bad. Hopfully i'll have the need for another truck sometime next season.

 

[Steve Frazier]

There are 3 companies within 10 miles of me that run these trucks. One is only a couple miles away and I usually use them whenever I need concrete. They don't have a minimum load like the transit mix companies do, and work Saturdays and even Sundays if needed. The concrete that comes is as good as any from a transit mix and the mix can be changed as needed at the job.

I don't do big pours, usually deck footings or a sidewalk repair. This type truck works best for the jobs I do. Nice looking rig!!

 

[cat320]

Here it is a 6 yard min for a transite truck to come and like your Steve most of the stuff I do is under and this truck is great I poured a walk last year and we were lucky enought to get some one that had one come by . nothing like pouring all wet vs having to have a cold joint if you had to go get it yourself one yard at a time.

 

[PETE379]

Being in the landscape supply business, those are the size/type of jobs most of my customers have. Thats whats nice about this truck because sometimes we do 2 or 3 stops with one load, and still able to do large orders if needed.