Hey ya'll, I am looking into purchasing a new grapple truck thru work, I have a pretty decent budget to work with and some general stuff to go off of but am looking into some insight as to some favorites out there. What we are looking for is a 450 hp truck, with a hardox or equivalent box, non dumping, 24 ft long, and a rear mounted knuckle, or L-boom with a heiden grapple. The truck will be used for storm clean-up, and city forestry operations. Curious what everyone is using out there for stuff like this. Our current truck is a l8500 sterling with a midship mounted IMT and a dump bed and the biggest complaint is the truck is under powered and the boom is extremely slow ( boom is designed as a drywall boom, not meant for continuous turn around.) Just wondering if anyone has experience with the Palfinger Epsilon or if there are any other companies out there that may be better. Thanks ya'll
IMO the Palfinger Epsilon M13A is an outstanding choice. I have a 27' Rotobec and would very much like to change it to the M13A98 with 32' of side reach. The internal hose routing is a huge plus, and the three stage dipper boom will be very handy both for reach and getting material over my 13' side height.
Holy side height! we are only able to go with 7 foot high sides due to residential low hanging trees. We have been looking really hard and have ran a few palfingers, including the m13a. My guys love it, just writing specs right now hoping to get palfinger in the public bid instead of imt
Your sides are 7' from the ground or the bed? If it's from the bed, that's not bad. Mine is 13' from the ground, 9' from the bed's floor. The bed has a 76.5 yard struck full capacity, 26' long, plus the section over the cab.
Ours will be 24' long and 7' from the floor of the bed. We are also going to have a cab guard installed off of the front of the box. Hoping to be able to stow the boom in the bed without having to fold it up. We would like to go taller but the areas this truck is working most of the time, we wouldn't fit without making more work for the crew. Have you seen the eps hood or any of the add on stuff from palfinger? Thinking that when folded down it would help protect the controls from limbs and such.
The seat can fold down without the EPS hood offering some protection to the controls. In general, you don't want your seat/controls/loader to be the highest point, I would suggest building the side height to a few inches higher than the loader to protect it. You could run a trailer column on a block to lower the seat height to the detriment of ground clearance if that helped.
Good point, we are thinking about bringing the cab guard up a few inches just to make sure the operators station isn't the highest.
If the cab guard is higher, why not capitalize on that by making the walls higher? If just the front is higher, the limb can droop back down before it gets to the loader.... granted stuff happens, but usually the bigger concern with my truck is having enough clearance to raise the boom without running into limbs. Usually I can dodge around/plow through the occasional low limb. Here's my limb buster/money maker. I may upgrade it over the winter, sell this one and build a similar replacement with an Epsilon on a new(er) chassis. I wish Mack made MRUs as a glider. I think it would make an interesting chassis, allowing ~5' of either shorter overall length, longer bed, or some combination of the two.
Is that box custom made or is it manufactured? Also meant to as, what is the down reach on that rotobec boom? we also have to clean out waterways under bridges and such of limbs and debris and the IMT we have now doesn't reach down very far. We are wanting to go with the palfinger but may end up with a rotobec or other. About the only way I could spec it was it had to be a purpose built forestry/logging boom, but there are still a few that could bid on it.
Custom built box, I don't think the market is big enough to actually have serial production/"manufactured" boxes. Everyone wants this or that in terms of length and height, stocking would be a nightmare. The main boom doesn't go much below horizontal, but I can't find the chart for it at the moment. I would think you could tailor the specs to influence boom selection, such as using capacity and reach as criteria.
I can, but i can't use proprietary things such as with palfinger, 70% of the hydraulic hoses are inside the boom for protection. The thing we like about the palfingers is they will reach down off of bridges to grab brush, the speed is outstanding, but we can't use that because it will kick others out from being able to bid. The truck builders we have been talking to around here sell either beau-roc or brandon beds with the angled down ends for boom clearance. All built of hardox or ar steel and can get as long or tall as you want, but lengths are only in 2 foot increments.
I guess what I am trying to say is I can't just copy paste the specs from the m13 into by bid specs. it has to be between xx and xx or approved other.
You only have to have 2 bids to award, correct?
yes but they can/will cause trouble if we use proprietary specs, builders that don't sell palfinger will gripe if we reject their bids for some things.
Sure, but no point in buying something that doesn't fit your needs (in terms of reaching down to clean around bridges).
I work for a county highway department. If we need that reach down feature, we write a generic spec that includes that feature. We do our homework with our governing board that it's a needed feature and there is only one manufacturer. Sometimes the local dealer works to get another dealer outside the local territory to submit a bid. Buying a Gradall is problematic this way. We are fortunate our Board backs up our decisions / requests.
See that's where you have it a bit better in this situation. They don't want to worry about pissing off other bidders if a variance kicks them out of the running and aren't willing to work with us on my side. The dealer is willing to work with us in that way and has for us and others in the past.