Capital Equipment News October 2019

LOAD WEIGHING SYSTEMS

An onboard weighing system like those offered by Loadrite can be used to calculate the weight of material in an excavator’s bucket.

Putting total cost of ownership in your hands

T otal cost of ownership includes everything from the original purchase price to the daily running and maintenance costs, depreciation, finance and even ‘hidden’ costs like insurance and employee wages. A machine that appears to be competitively priced may end up costing many thousands more than a higher priced machine because it may deliver lower productivity, increased fuel and maintenance costs and a lower resale value. You can measure total cost of ownership based on the number of hours a machine works, or based on actual productivity in terms of the amount of material moved. By basing total cost of ownership calculations on the amount of material moved, operators can get a clearer picture of the machine’s actual cost of ownership, since a machine that moves more material in less time is likely to generate more income, as well as using less fuel per ton of material moved. While it makes sense to choose a fuel efficient, highly productive machine, it is also possible for smart operators to proactively reduce the machine’s total cost of ownership by reducing the running costs, according to Glen Webster of Loadtech. There are a number of steps that can achieve this, such as improving efficiency to reduce fuel usage, optimising the loading process and improving the maintenance scheduling so that all machines and vehicles are up and running when you need them to be. Measuring productivity “The first step is to understand how productive your machines are, including how much fuel they use and how much material they move,”

While savvy operators know that total cost of equipment ownership is more important than just the purchase price, what most don’t know is that they can actively reduce their total cost of ownership across earthmoving equipment and trucks by using Loadrite’s monitoring and alert features to set benchmarks and measure productivity.

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