The "Backhoe Killer"

yeah we just loaded up because we got some storms coming we've been here 4 minutes since we pulled up to this s we drag the P truck up a hill in the woods and you can travel just as fast as in Reverse as forward I notice that's a skid steer attachment you got on the end of [Music] there and they're just showing us how they use these things all right guys today we're at the Village of Slinger and I'm going to introduce you to the Slinger Team guys actually introduce yourselves oh I'm Dan McCarthy I work for LF George okay James Bill gam with LF George is well I'm Al sto I'm with the vill Slinger Foreman Riley playing vill Slinger I'm I up for M Jeff Andrews I work for M Travis from the vill Slinger all right and I'm stay the dirt monkey guys and the guy I want to introduce you to right now is Al he basically takes this machine home and Cuddles with it at night wish you put about 600 hours on this thing in the last 18 months yep why do you like this machine so much Al I like it cuz it's versatile and you can drive it everywhere you don't have to haul haul it on a trailer and being a village we do all of our work in a relatively small area so saving a whole truck and trailer is pretty nice okay but it's got wheels here in America you know we use tracks right yep okay so why do you like the wheel so much cuz it drives itself I don't need to haul it with a trailer do you find that the stability kind of throws you off though no the wheels don't give you a kink in your our mini we used to have okay Jeff Jeff you were telling me off camera now guys this is Jeff he actually is the you do the training across the United States and Canada with Renault come on in here Renault Renault is freaking crazy uh he actually is really crazy um that this machine this wheel excavator has a lower center of gravity than any other wheel excavator on the market mhm and you guys have been doing this longer than anybody else in the market absolutely yeah so tell me a little bit about that je so we have more models than anybody else we have five models in our wield excavator lineup the 12 MTX that we visited together plus another four wield models so you see this unit here this is our 11 ton iteration and what we were what we were talking about earlier is the fact that wheel excavators typically they're an after is they'll take a track excavator turret and stick it on a wheel chassis and they have to accommodate for wheel oscillation the axle oscillation so what that happens is it makes for an extremely high machine and you can see that for yourselves if you go to on work sites and you look at the machines out there you'll see they're phenomenally high so that makes for a high center of gravity an unstable machine the pucker butt complex exactly exactly yeah this the spinster sensor yes yeah okay y y so so here we have a machine that was designed to be a wield excavator right out of the box and the Very telling feature about that is if you look at the chassis there's a notch cut into it right here so the riser for the house bearing actually doesn't add to the height it's actually sunk into the frame we want a machine that is as low as possible to have a very good center of gravity so very good on and off-road stability M that makes sense okay now you guys have a crazy schedule for us today right who's jumping in to tell us everything we're going to do Al you going to jump in and tell us everything we're going to do we're going to cut a tree down and uh chip it up mold the logs up we're going to put a Forester head on it grind some brush we're going to put a stump grinder on it grind some stumps and then we can uh dig some salt out of our P trucks make some salt grind so do you think we can do all that standing around here looking like a bunch of guys working on a on a side of a road or are we going to get to to the job let's get at it all right let's get at it wait how fast did you say that goes Al probably 20 20 M an hour yeah the bigger one the smaller one this go 25 no wonder you drive that too so now H you're a tiny guy how is getting in and out of this machine for you it's not bad it's not bad I mean I'm a big guy yeah I don't have too much of a problem with it um there's enough stuff to grab on to those nice steps that you won't slip off got nice drips on there so what is what's the point with accessibility on this is are you saying it's better than somebody else's well it's a lot better than everybody else's because what we've done is we've planned for this machine to have four points of access on it so a lot of workplace accidents happen when you either get getting into or out of the machine or you're doing your daily checks so our daily checks are all not to be done with two Fe On The Ground we can see that if we open up the engine bank but then steps on the driver's side on the left hand side steps on the right hand side if you come over here and you look at the blade and we deploy the blade all the way down this becomes a step and that serrated part on the blade that becomes another step so it's super safe to get into and out of the machine from there and on the back end of the machine you can climb up onto the out all depending on where you're set up so You' got a choice of places to get into and out of the machine safely so we're going to be Gra in this tree and that's we''ve gotten really good over the last few months with this machine taking down trees cutting them up and just feeding them right into the chipper don't even have to touch it all you have to do is have a guy guide the branches in the chipper that's about it okay so you you you just make your three Cuts boom boom your back Cuts your front cut you're not branching it you're not worri about nothing you let the meac do the rest it we do have to branches because our chipper can't handle the big branches so we have to just small enough the grapp grab them beat them in okay all right well let's watch how they do this operation [Music] [Applause] St [Applause] a all right I got to say whoever said city workers aren't efficient didn't have a freaking mecalac that is the fastest I've ever seen a tree down ground up and get S clear ever he doesn't even get out he yeah that's why they love it multiple use function they got rid of their regular track machine they're driving everywhere they don't put it on trailers they' got plenty of attachments this is what they use for [Applause] everything it's not real I mean just how they got this dialed in you guys I I I'm not often at tress not very often you guys got this thing St here for the record we got here at a little bit after 9 and it's 9:30 and that tree's down and gone that's what's left of it out that is H I have never seen a tree downed cleaned up that fast ever in my life we got to science here yeah you do m [Music] all right now when you were lifting that log over the side of the road and extending out how did that feel how was the bucker Factor it wasn't I you can lock the axles on there and you really don't feel what does that mean I mean the only the only thing you feel is the flex of the tires that's it but after you run that thing for an hour you get used to that okay now you were saying what that attachment weighs about 1,700 lb cuz these guys are earning the CF Hydro grapple on there so that's adding extra weight to that of that hole y just by the nature of that attachment right I mean I wouldn't be afraid to extend that all the way out and grab that log so these cylinders right here there's one on either side that's what controls the axle oscillation so the operator can manually lock it but when he locks the brake it will automatically lock so when they're reaching over the side they don't have to worry about the machine tipping over it's a lot quicker than having to deploy the out rers and bring them back up every single time W so four points of stability so this it's as though you were on ERS except you're on tires so you can still drive you can still do all those operations reach over on the side and you're still super stable but for the guys that are old school that can't get that out of their brain you actually do have out rer you got a front blade and then you got a back blade and this all acts as an outrigger right exactly exactly and the premise for that is you notice the Outriggers are in the back of the machine and the oscillating axle is on the front so what we can do is we can actually correct the stability level of the machine we can level ourselves out lock the axle so we've got a stable point in back and a stable point in front so we can be off kilter like we're going off on the side of the road and we're level super stable so let's go talk to Al Al yeah you were saying this was your favorite machine y why why yeah it's so versatile and the fact that you can drive to a work site so fast and you can do anything with it with the boom all the way out and it's stable is meac paying you to say this no so another cool thing about this machine you're working in a nice tight area sometimes you don't have that option to turn around so you're stuck with turning the Boom the opposite way driving in Reverse but on some other machines your steerings reverse them so left is right right is left the cool option on this machine there's one button you push it swaps the entire steering around so you're not getting disoriented on what direction you're going and you can travel just as fast as in Reverse as forward so it's not like you're driving down the wrong side of the road anymore no y you hit a button and everything's or reoriented back I mean cuz right now just from what we've done it's not even 10:00 in the morning we've completely wiped the tree out grounded up nobody was manhandling that tree we didn't have a trailer we weren't we weren't hopping in a trailer trying to get this thing loaded up chained down you hopped in you were going down the road at what 20 M an hour yeah sometimes 25 sometimes 25 yeah just a guy can just get in and stay in all day long tight area is we can hook the chipper right off to the blade so this blade actually has a pickle hitch that came from meac you unbolt it put it on the front side you can hook up the chipper a trailer or even a little dump box for it and with the option to flip the steering wheel steering around you can drive it just as it you're towing it with the truck have you ever done that though have you ever actually used that hitch we had a had a chipper that we couldn't get the truck turn around with the chipper hooked up so we hooked the chipper behind this drove it down there unhooked it then backed the truck down yesterday we draged a plow truck up a hill in the woods with it yesterday yeah probably should have saved that for today but well and even though it's got tires I Ed this blade as a dozer I I was probably pushing 4ft tall mound of gravel asphalt slabs and it worked amazing if you turn the axle lock off it'll plow right through anything it works just as well as a mid so the premise behind migrating to uh uh from a backhoe to a wheeled excavator is you know people back in the day they went with the versatile tool that was available to them which was the back ho but nowadays with you know improvements to machinery and you know the Advent of you know products like meac coming out to the market people are migrating to wield excavators now the only hurdle we have to overcome is stability and I think that you know with the videos that we've been doing and all our demonstrations we've proven that these machines are extremely stable so the next step is showing how versatile these machines are how quickly they can get onto site do the work and go to the next site so productivity versatility all right so he's now going to switch out the CMP grapple for a forestry head let's go see how this goes so every time I switch attachments I go in here and I and I select my attachment icon okay and I have preset hydraulic flows for every one of my attachments for my CMP grapple my forestry head my stump grinder cuz the stump grinder I can put too much oil to it and it'll blow the hydraulic pump off so I had to dial the Hydraulics down for our stump grinder but for this I got them cranked up all the way so I just select my my uh attachment and then I go back to my main screen it says battle ax and uh all my flows are cranked up all the way from my forestry head the time is 10:27 we're already to our second job [Music] site now this is where I'm really kind of paying attention to the center of gravity on the machine he's got that boom arm extended all the way out and that is a heavy attachment on the end so I'm watching the machine to see how well it handles it and you guys let me know what you think does it look like it's Tippy or does it look stable with that big attach that big weight sticking all the way out there you tell me so I'm noticing how far he's got that boom extended out and that's a fat head he's got on there absolutely yep so the way that the way way that we're able to work here is we're able to reach out the length of the machine which is 21 ft but we can also work really really close to the machine whereas a typical excavator your elbow is going to be all the way out so you won't have any curl you won't be able to work close to the machine plus your elbow's going to be out there impeding your movement so we can tuck all that back into the machine and work super close is now is that because you got an extra boom cylinder right next to the cab that tucks everything in our boom is a variable angle boom that means that we can reach out and reach back into the machine tuck everything in nice and close but now the boom let's go over here so we can see it so Jeffrey is the expert from meac the boom also angles 15° side to side too right exactly so in theory what what we could be doing now is we could be working keeping the cutter head parallel to the road and using the offset to do that so this particular circumstance it doesn't matter for the operator but let's say it was more densely populated he could be working keeping the cutter parallel to his to his work and he wouldn't be throwing stuff all over the place okay it's 11:00 we're at our third site we've already taken down a treat we've cleaned the ditch now we're going to pop on a stump we're popping on a stump grinder now is that the [Music] [Applause] [Music] plan we've been here 4 minutes since we pulled up to this right so I noticed that's a skid steer attachment you got on the end of there yep you can dig in the piles you can put the pallet perks on there we use it all the time just for a cold storage cuz you don't have to move the trailers out of the way you can reach right up and over and put them back on the Shelf so that was another benefit of this machine you can flip everything over you can suck the Boom in get it nice and close to the cab and you can use it essentially just like a skid steer so that's pretty cool that it works just as good as a skid loader but let's see how it works as an excavator we're going to go one town over and watch them use it on one of their job sites okay how long of a ride was that Paul that was about 2 miles okay um and from where our our Public Works is centrally kind of centrally located in our Township so taking this anywhere within our Township 15 20 minutes somebody can just hop in there and drive there and be there instead of loading it on a trailer unloading it and that's one of the reasons why we bought a wheel ex okay you know do some work in this area do a little ditching go take care of another problem somewhere else and relatively quickly because we're not holding and UNL [Music] [Applause] [Music] what he's doing is by using that cuz nobody else does that right exactly yeah so we're not the only manufacturer out there that has a multi segmented boom and uh and stick but the thing is is that we're unique in the way that we we put it out there so you see that the way that our stick cylinder our stick cylinder the variable angle boom cylinder are working together and that allows you three times the digging amplitude of a standard excavator and any other machine out there as well so you can see we can dig all along here pick up all that material and work right up close to the machine and he's still got lots of stroke on his stick so make he's using it right there y exactly y okay okay but now also every single cylinder has a lockout mechanism on it so if you ever blow a hose the machine freezes in place and doesn't drop and crush somebody exactly so that's exactly right so for a job like we're doing right now we're putting in a culvert safety is very important because you know you got to people around and if ever for some reason a piece of debris where let's say come and cut a hose and the hose fails the boo stays exactly where it is do you want to try D working alongside of your trench and not straddling it and if you don't want to do it do you want to watch where's the crazy Frenchman the crazy Frenchman do it or Jeffrey do it we can most definitely try it okay all right so come on over to this way either that way your choice and we'll use the offset and we'll dig parallel to the machine okay have you ever done it before John not offset like this not to it to the extent of what you're asking now do you want to see one of these guys do it first or do you just want to go for it oh we're just going to go for it hell yeah that's my kind of guy I love it all right John this side oh look at that okay so he's not digging he's not straddling his work at this Point's [Applause] see how close you can work to the machine that's because we got the variable angle boom we all the way back in [Applause] [Music] and the guys that we're talking to aren't salesmen these are the guys that bought their own mecalac and they're just showing us how they use these things so I was just I was just dead wrong now we're going to go mix brine cuz why not we've got extra time mecalac has their own skid Ste your bucket dedicated for the machine but it's actually bigger than this one and they need to fit this into the back of their semi TR to pull the brine out so they just use their John Deere skid steer bucket to do it okay so wait you carry you keep the salt in the back of the truck yep we just loaded up because we got some storms coming uh what we normally do cuz we don't have salt storage on this property so we end up loading up at County call it here but we P purchased our own grind maker so we have the capability of making our own brine we have a customade brine sprayer applicator for the roads and then we we purchased one too so being able just not to have to store salt on the property use the trucks that are already loaded make your own rind we're s now you remember in the beginning of this video I said that Al would probably go home and cuddle with this machine if he could well I don't know if these guys were just showing off or what the deal was but I watch them use this mecalac more than any other piece of equipment that they have in their Fleet and the Village of Slinger Wisconsin has a lot of really nice equipment but this was their go-to for so many different kinds of jobs but let's just watch it in that what what time is it Al 1153 you totally cut down a tree this disintegrated it made it disappear loaded it into a chipper he never got out of the mecalac that's at one site yep went to a second site uh what we do next clear the brush forestry head forry head put the loftness battle ax on Lo up before that picked up the logs got rid of those yep went to a third site stump ground came back here put a skid loader bucket on and made about 600 600 gallons of BR okay 600 Al Z Brien and it's not even known yeah let's get unreal I I guess I can see what you guys like about this machine some completely change the entire Dynamic of how we do things Jeffrey now these guys do you have like a…