Reaching Out with a Spider

Taking a look back at this story I previously did for Earthmovers, bringing it to life on the internet with my original words, alternative images and video.

Staffordshire based and family-owned business WM Plant Hire is a name that has become synonymous with the hire of specialist long reach excavators in the UK, with the knowledge and over 50 years of experience to tackle the most demanding of jobs.

WM Plant Hire was originally founded by Brendon McGettrick who had moved to the UK from Ireland back in the day. Like all great businessmen, he had noticed a niche in the market, and that niche was a requirement for long reach excavators, which at the time, were a rare piece of equipment, with very few available at the time, Brendon decided to convert a Caterpillar 320 to a long reach version and the rest is history.

Today the company which is now run by Brendon’s sons, Managing Director, Damian McGettrick and Operations Director James McGettrick, operates the largest fleet of long reach hydraulic excavators in the UK, with the smallest offering being a Kubota 4-tonne class machine with 8m reach, and the largest being a Caterpillar 395 LR which has a reach of 32.0m.

Supplementing the long reach fleet and included in the 60-machine fleet are a number of ‘Go Anywhere’ Spider excavators, which operate on difficult to access sites, and which can navigate to places where a conventional tracked machine could never go on land, and even able to work in water up to a depth of 1.6m.

It was one of these phenomenal machines, the Italian built Euromach R 555 Forester, that we were invited to see working on a private rural residential property in the Stroud area of Gloucestershire.

A steep bank at the rear of the property had suffered a significant landslide that was threatening to take an all-weather tennis court with it. The geotechnical work to secure the hillside is being undertaken by North Devon based Garness Contracting Ltd, who have hired in the spider excavator from WM Plant Hire, and involves drilling for rock anchors with the drill mounted on the Euromach machine which is also fitted with an Engcon tiltrotator for extra flexibility of movement from one position.

With the recent heavy rainfall in the South West, the ground was something of a quagmire and combined with the extreme steepness of the bank, (the photos really don’t do it justice) this was the only machine that could have made it up there to tackle this first phase of the work.

The R555 Forester is a little beast, powered by a Stage V emissions compliant 4-cylinder Kubota diesel engine, which runs on HVO low emission fuel, offering a power output rating of 55.5kW (75hp) driving powerful Rexroth hydraulics running to 350 bar, and capable of delivering 260 litres of biodegradable hydraulic oil per minute, to drive a variety of oil hungry attachments.

The all-wheel drive machine features the familiar spider style variable geometry legs which can be spread out to a maximum width of 5100mm on the front legs and 3900mm on the rear making the machine extremely stable in a wide variety of situations, the legs also feature built-in anchors that will further hold the machine in place on steep embankments. In addition, the machine is fitted with a powerful winch which can be used to tether the machine, on super extreme slopes.

The impressive machine that when working, looks like something out of an episode of Thunderbirds, can offer a maximum reach at ground level of 7,080mm and a maximum dig depth of 4,480mm.

Operating this specialised piece of equipment is David Bromley (44) who hails from Shrewsbury, left school and went straight into work for a firm doing agricultural contracting, mainly land drainage and irrigation, eventually entering the construction industry where like many others, he cut his teeth on a JCB 3CX and a Mastenbroek trencher.

He then struck up on his own for 20 years as a sole trader working for local councils, but in the end, he got to a point where he couldn’t entertain all the red tape and paperwork, at that point he hired an 8-tonne long reach excavator from WM Plant Hire, and he got a bit of an addiction for the more unusual pieces of equipment.

He was then out on a job on the spiders with highly experienced spider operator Bob Waters, who showed Dave the ropes, and he was immediately hooked on the concept, and for the past four years he hasn’t looked back since, and is now virtually on the spiders every day.

Talking about the machine David said, “So yeah, as I said it’s the R 555 which weighs in at around the 12-tonne mark, and has 8-metres of reach, and as you can see its got the four independent legs, which enables me to work on banks around 45 degrees, and with the winch I can secure the machine for safety if I’m using the arm, but its secure and safe without the winch at this point in time, as its not that steep in the wider scheme of things. Further down the bank I am going to drill an anchor point and then I will tether the winch to that then.

You don’t see many of these about to be honest, and for me that’s what makes them so interesting, they are not your average excavator. The most famous ones are probably the Menzi Muck, Kaiser, and then these Euromach’s, but we are starting to see Chinese copies appearing now.

In the wider scheme of things this machine looks quite small, but it’s definitely deceiving,  I’ve turned up on jobs where they are like, ‘what are you going to do with that then’ in terms of lifting capacity and the like, but as an example, we recently done a job in Bewdley, where I was picking up Aquabags, for bank stabilization, over the river, just where you didn’t want to be slewing, but 3.2 tonnes, handled it no problem at all, which for a 12-tonne machine is phenomenal, and the force the telescopic boom exerts for pushing yourself up the bank is equally as impressive, its just an amazing piece of equipment”.

Talking about the job in hand David commented further, “So its landslip as you can see, there’s a natural spring underground and its obviously saturated the ground surrounding, causing this massive slip. So, we are soil nailing to a maximum depth of 16 metres deep with anchors, then they are grout flushed, and then netting is attached, to secure it all. Then at a later date we will return to reinstate some footpaths and do some more landscaping to finish the job off”.

WM Plant Hire also run a Swiss built Batemag spider excavator which is considered to be the pride of the fleet has an operating weight of around 16 tonnes. Sitting on 710mm LGP floatation tyres, this machine can wade into water up to 2m and has a maximum lift capacity of 4.5 tonnes.

The spider excavators offer another dimension to the company’s long reach excavators, for example, on jobs where even the longest long reach machine can’t quite reach, the spiders can travel down the slopes and throw material to within reach of the machine at the top of the embankment, with both machines working in harmony together.

Summarizing Dave said, “It’s a tribute to the vision of Brendon, Damian and James that the company has become so successful, they understand the inner workings of the machines and what they are capable of, as well as having the knowledge of how to tackle the jobs we undertake.

We have great support from our Plant Manager Joe O’Sullivan, he runs a tight ship and the machines are always in tip top condition, there isn’t anything that the machines want for when they leave the yard to go out on hire, everything is top quality, the lads in the yard are the unsung heroes really and they do a cracking job in looking after the kit, I like to think the passion for what we do rubs off on everyone on the firm, I’d have to say as a company its absolutely top notch”.