Thomas Armstrong (Aggregates) buys third generation of Doosan wheeled loaders for quarry operations
A quarry operation in north-west England has taken delivery of two new
Thomas Armstrong (Aggregates) received the loaders from Carlisle-based Lloyd, the Doosan dealer for County Cumbria, north-west England and the southern part of Scotland.
Operating at the Thomas Armstrong quarries at Overby and Newcowper in Cumbria, the new machines represent the third generation of Doosan wheeled loaders to be bought by the company over the last ten years.
The Overby facility is based on a natural glacial sand deposit which is mined directly from the face by the new Doosan DL420 wheeled loader.
The sand is loaded by the DL420 model into a screening machine which separates out different grades of gravel and sand. The screened sand is then stockpiled by the loader for later use or loaded directly into trucks, mostly owned by Thomas Armstrong, for delivery to customers in the region.
The new DL420 wheeled loader at the Newcowper Quarry works similar hours and on different applications.
One of the main jobs for the loader is supplying a wash plant which grades materials into different sizes, and as the Newcowper facility is coming to the end of its working life so the DL420 is also used for remedial work around the quarry.
The wash plant will be replaced in the future by a new system under construction at the Overby Quarry.
Thomas Armstrong (Aggregates) is a founder member and keen supporter of the
The company has further bagging plants in Glasgow (Scotland), Durham and Liverpool to supply merchants throughout the north-west and north-east of England and the central belt of Scotland.
Thomas Armstrong (Aggregates), part of Thomas Armstrong (Holdings), is one of the UK’s largest privately-owned manufacturers of building products and suppliers of building services, and was founded by Thomas Armstrong in 1830.
The company’s ever-growing portfolio allows the group to offer a one-stop shop, from designing a building, manufacturing the building materials, delivering them to site, constructing the building and maintaining it during its life.
As well as Cumbria, Lloyd is the authorised Doosan dealer for the southern part of Scotland, covering east and South Ayrshire, the border counties, south Lanarkshire and Dumfries and Galloway.
The new Doosan DL420 wheeled loaders have succeeded previous generation Doosan DL400 wheeled loaders which in turn succeeded two of Doosan’s Mega 400 generation wheeled loaders formerly owned by Thomas Armstrong.
Frank Harkness, director of Thomas Armstrong (Aggregates) said: “The previous Doosan DL400 wheeled loaders ran with no major issues for the last six years as had the Mega models before them. The DL400s had each run up an impressive 14,500 hours and our drivers really liked them.”
Martin Cueto, the Overby Quarry manager, said: “The DL420 wheeled loader also loads an articulated dump truck which takes the sand and gravel to our packaging plant where it is bagged in robot-controlled systems into 25kg and bulk bags for delivery to customers including major builders merchants chains.”
With a bucket capacity of 4m3, the 22.3tonne DL420 loader is powered by an 11litre turbocharged, electronically-controlled engine with high pressure unit injector system and a state-of-the-art combustion system developing 209kW at 2,000rpm.
The DL420 offers a static tipping load with bucket of 18.9tonne (at maximum reach with a straight frame) and a height at bucket pivot point of 4.35m.
