British kit rules for Andrews Plant

by Nick Drew | Thu 31 Mar 2016

British kit rules for Andrews Plant

In this post I am going to publish a few more photos from my Earthmovers visit to Andrews Plant in Dorset, with a selection of shots that didn’t make it into the last issue.

Peter Andrews has had a long term association with the JCB brand having purchased his first backhoe loader back in the late 1960’s. The company’s dedication to the brand has continued over the years with the exceptions being a few Case and Komatsu machines along the way to meet specific requirements at the time. The current fleet tally numbers 42 machines and is dominated by JCB. The fleet comprises of 2 x JS360LC’s, 12 x JS220LC’s, 2 x JS130LC’s, 1 JZ140LC, 2 x 86 C-1’s and various sizes of mini excavators.

More recently a fleet of 6 JCB forward tipping site dumpers have been added to the fleet to replace some older Barford models. Peter said, “These new JCB site dumpers have a good heritage behind them and all use well proven components, it’s great that we can now source both our backhoe loaders, excavators and forward tipping site dumpers from one dealer”.

There are exceptions on the fleet of course. The articulated haulers come from two different stables, featuring models from South African manufacturer Bell and a number of units from Terex.

The prime loading shovel on site at the Trigon clay pit in Wareham is JCB’s flagship model the 457 which features the CommandPlus cab. The 457’s role is to feed the company’s McCloskey S130 screener and attend to the resulting screened material. It’s a busy job for long serving operator Mike Holt, who has been operating shovels for the company for over 17 years. The finished product is sold as “cow bedding”, which is used on farms across the south and south west instead of straw.

The machine features a larger than standard bulking bucket with a capacity of 3.7m³which is manufactured by Ulrich and features an on-board weighing system to ensure lorries receive the correct weight with every load. It’s estimated that the 457 feeds between 6,000 - 7,000 tonnes of material per week through the screener and loads it onto the transport out of the pit.

We then visited another pit where Andrews Plant had recently completed a 1 million cubic meter excavation to expose more ball clay, which is used to make a wide variety of products and is exported all over the world, even as far away as China. The primary excavator in this pit comes from the Komatsu stable in the form of a 2014 model PC490LC-10, which has amassed 3,400 hours on it and still looks like brand new. On the day of our visit the machine was undergoing a service.

The operator of this machine is Terry Brown who is one of the longest serving employees on the firm, having been with them for 43 years, talking about his machine Terry said “Brilliant machine, my last one, which was a PC450LC, had over 19,000 hours on it when it went and never missed a beat with no real troubles at all”. Kom 490 op Terry Brown

Terry was busy loading some of the firms Terex dumptrucks with another JCB JS220LC while his machine was being serviced.

It was great to meet such a long term customer and staunch supporter of the JCB brand and the sun shone all day in beautiful Dorset!

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