APPLICATIONS AND PRODUCTIVITY - APPLICATIONS AND ASPIRATIONS

Applications - yes, as many as you like. Aspirations - almost as many. It's a tip-top excavator, it's a super-wheeled loader, (high lift included), it's a grader and it's a clamshell grab. But what about its productivity?

Well, it's not really that sort of tool is it? It's a jack of all trades piece of kit that does lots of things satisfactorily but isn't really master of many of them.

But that doesn't stop people buying them, it certainly doesn't stop people hiring them in droves and it doesn't stop the manufacturers pouring money into ever more development of the theme.

Applications, however, are myriad. We've seen them on every building site in the country. But sometimes they depend on where you are situated. Ray Whayman runs a Ford backhoe or two in Suffolk and he's ready to turn his hand to anything. But the job that gives him and his operator most pleasure and satisfaction is the time of year when local farmers and landowners want their ditches cleaned.

'You need a combination of several things,' says Ray. 'A good eye is essential. Some of these old ditches have a very shallow fall over a very long field side. You've got to get it right. There's not a lot of gain in having to come back because the farmer sees his drainage water running backwards. To be truthful there's them that can do it and there's them that can't and never will.

'You need a machine with as narrow a boom and dipper as possible because you really need to have the best view you can get. And you need a good sharp, true-edged ditching bucket, or blade as some people call it.

'That's how I got into buying Ford kit years ago because the old JCBs used to have a very wide boom that blocked your view. You had to work standing up and peering round the boom. It played havoc with your back. The old Fords had a skinny boom that gave good vision and I've stuck with them. But really, nowadays, there's not much to choose from. Cabs have improved, controls are lighter and better. Machines are more powerful and faster and it's a lot easier. But you can't rush a ditching job and you still need a good eye.'

There's a road improvement job going on in Cambridgeshire and as usual it involves a lot of gully traps. But the ground is friable and the plant manager has been around a long time. He operates a few backhoe loaders and hires in a lot more. So he thought hard about the problem and came up with the answer. He bought an auger attachment and he is using the backhoe loaders to drill the gully trap holes. 'It saves a lot of work and material,' he says, 'and when one machine finishes using the auger it just goes into the compound until the next one needs it. I reckon it's saving us thousands each month on this particular site and it won't be the last time we'll use the technique.'

Cable contractors still use backhoes simply because of the versatility. As one experienced foreman puts it: 'I know we could get more sheer productivity out of a powerful trencher but that's all we'd get. With the backhoe loader we get the slower trenching but we also get clean-up ability with the multi-purpose front bucket. We get the ability to load trucks for muck-away if necessary. We can attach a rotary brush to clean the site or a vibrating plate to assist backfill compaction. For our sort of job it's a terrific package because it doesn't involve half a dozen different machines each with its own peculiarities. Backhoe loaders, how did we ever manage without them?'

There is even an attachment, built by Boughton Group of Amersham which puts a hydraulic winch at the bucket end of the dipper - just the thing for drawing cables through ducting, or a re-lining sock of one type or another through an old service pipe. And it's not detracting from the machine's true forte which is digging trenches.

Perhaps the most unusual backhoe loader belongs to a Lincolnshire firm. DiFuria Contractors is based at Saundby near Gainsborough and five years ago it perceived a need for a special kind of machine able to work on British Rail's trackside maintenance. The decision was taken to purchase a Ford backhoe loader and have it converted so that when necessary it could take to the rails. But it still had to retain its roadgoing ability and work performance.

The original machine has now seen five years of service and it's been joined by a second example. This time DiFuria has stayed with Ford (or New Holland Ford) but has bought the more powerful turbocharged model.

So you can see that the idea has been successful. The machines are used to keep down the trackside embankment undergrowth using a dipper-mounted flail mower. They have hydraulic hammer attachments, too, for small demolition jobs and they can utilise their multi-purpose front buckets to grade track ballast. So far as we are aware, the DiFuria backhoe loaders are unique but the wheel has turned full circle now because DiFuria is awaiting delivery and modification of a 360¼ road/rail excavator - 'for those bigger contracts' as Tony DiFuria puts it.

Local authorities are usually fond of the backhoe loader concept but they like to get their 'pound of flesh' out of the machines too. So it's often in an LA's depot that you'll come across attachments that you wouldn't normally expect to see.

Take the Nathan Digamix for example. The Digamix is one of those brilliantly simple ideas - it's a large rotating drum driven off the machine's front bucket hydraulic system. The operator simply opens the drum, drives into the aggregate stockpile to load, someone tips in the requisite amount of cement and squirts the correct dose of water in. The operator rotates the device again using the auxiliary hydraulic system and, ergo - a large dollop of ready mixed concrete.

It's ideal for small patching jobs because it gets the local authorities away from their reliance on readymix companies and their high charges for making small deliveries. All a local authority small works department needs to do now is stock the necessary aggregates and some bagged cement and they can work to their own individual programmes. 'It can save a lot of grief,' as one LA manager succinctly puts it!

The front bucket, too, has seen its share of change over the years. From a simple scoop it has progressed to the current multi-purpose unit which is now the preferred spec. for most buyers. First a '4 in 1' unit, now some manufacturers call it a '6 in 1', and most have sliding pallet forks built in. So the backhoe loader may be said to have replaced the once-mighty Drott crawler loaders in the hearts of plantmen. Four-wheel-drive has meant greater efficiency and better loading power so a backhoe loader can now offer a fairly creditable imitation of a proper purpose-built wheeled loader. All such features helping to sustain the powerful 'do anything' image in the eyes of users.

JCB has, perhaps, the best claim to building the smallest backhoe loader with its 1CX derivation of its Robot skidsteer. But it hasn't stood still even then. It has recently decided to offer a very narrow boom option so that cable installers can utilise buckets as narrow as 150mm. That means even less disruption to work sites and, of course, less extraneous matter to be backfilled, compacted, made good, etc. It's just another arrow in the backhoe loader's quiver.

The most commonly seen attachment of all is the hydraulic hammer. It is great for road refurbishment jobs where a purpose-built heavy breaking rig would be expensive overkill. It can reduce what would be quite a big job for an air compressor and a couple of men with handheld breakers to just a few minutes' work. And if the backhoe loader is fitted with a quick coupler, so much the better. That's versatility for you.

But the ability to dig a hole or trench at the drop of a hat remains paramount. It's the raison d'ˆtre of the breed despite what you may think to the contrary. All of the rest is just window dressing.