After more than 40 years gas installation, Mark Neyland and his company, RAM Boring and Excavations, have plenty of experience in knowing what to expect from earthmoving equipment. About 10 years ago Mark changed from the machinery he’d been using for some time to Hitachi, and he hasn’t looked back.
“My first Hitachi was a 3.3-tonne excavator,” Mark remembered, his fleet obviously clear in his mind. “Now I have one 1.7 tonne, I have two 2.6 tonne, I have three 3.3 tonne, I have one 5.5 tonne, and I have one 8.5 tonne.”
Based in Hallam, Victoria, and currently with 16 employees, RAM Boring & Excavations is heavily committed to gas installation work. It’s a busy outfit with personnel and machinery kept hard at work, mostly on tight-access sites. Gas-main installation requires a lot of time on public streets where space is limited at best, working between trees and near traffic.
“What we do is, we work up a street,” explained the company director.
“For instance, we might have a project of seven kilometres of main gas lines, and there could be 2000 houses. We upgrade as we go, working against the pressure. We’ll chop the low-pressure mains off, and then we’ll insert the high-pressure mains and connect the houses at the same time,” he explained. “That way the households are without gas for, usually, a day at most.”
Which machines get the most work?
“It’s horses for courses,” Mark said. “We take the 5.5 tonne and 8.5 tonne out for bigger jobs, but we mostly work with the two 2.6-tonners, the one 1.7 tonne and the 3.3 tonne. We have some Bobcats as well, and our own trucks transport the equipment. At any time on a job there are usually five machines and they work together as a team. We might do 10 to 20 houses a day.”
Good support
Mark is very settled on his association with Hitachi and doesn’t foresee any change in the near future. He’s even found benefits when it’s time to renew or upgrade.
“We’ve found Hitachi is a better quality of machine,” he pointed out. “It does everything we need it to do for our job. And the maintenance is good. I get them serviced every 250 hours, and I probably keep them for about five years. Then usually I trade them in and get a good trade back off Hitachi.
“That’s really good,” he smiled. “I find Hitachi is good to deal with. I get a lot of backup with Hitachi.”
But there’s an even bigger demonstration of Mark’s faith in his Hitachi excavators.
“I’ve sold some of my machines to friends of mine. You couldn’t sell them to friends unless you knew they were good and reliable. Those machines had done around 3500 hours or 4000 hours, and really, the only wear and tear if the machines are serviced regularly is tracks. Because we’re mostly on roads, the tracks really cop some wear.
“Hoses? He shook his head. “The Hitachis never blow ’em. They’re a good machine and I can’t knock them.”
To learn more of the Hitachi range and find the nearest dealer, log on to hitachicm.com.au.