Is anyone fimilar with using stone slingers on jobs youve been on? How well do they perform, how versitle are they? How do the companies that provide that service charge, eg, by the hour, by the yard/ton?
Around here they charge $125 an hour, they start billing when they hit the pit to load material. They work best with sand, pea gravel, crushed rock, etc. Bigger stuff doesnt fly as accurately, and the guys we use say that anything over 4" will/can break the belt so they wont throw anything larger than that, and they wont throw any native material you have on site unless you screen it. And as far as how well they work, its all in the operator, one time they sent me a guy in training, i was pissed as hell as he couldnt lay the material down worth a damn. With a good operator you could have him do something like backfill a basement for the basement slab and you would hardly have to touch it with a rake.
:yup
Ive never got to see one in use, and come to think of it, ive never seen one on the road. I cant even find one used. So im trying to research this as much as possible, and if anyone has any input, info feel free to share.
Time for Digger to reveal the shortcomings in his experience... (I was hoping to be able to figure it out from the replies, but there haven't been enought to give me a real good clue.) What the heck is a "stone slinger"?
If me and him are on the same page, its a truck with a conveyer mounted on the back that can swing from side to side and up and down. this picture is actually of house we did, i found the pic on their website http://www.sunrisematerialplacing.com are the guys we use, their site has more pictures
It appears I'm at a loss too. Stone Slinger???
Oops, waited to long. I need one of those for all those tailgaters.:guns
http://www.superstoneslinger.com/ there's quite a few in this area....often stone for under basement floors is the most common use....also for spreading stone for septic fields if access allows. A good operator can do an excellent job setting grade...also somewhat packs the material because of the 'throwing' action Mark
They are not that common most definatly a specialized service. The one Mack dealers website is down right now but they have a picture of a customers brand new tridrive Mack stone slinger truck nice looking rig. We don't have any companies in this are that do that kind of service just not enough demand. The cost of the system and the cost of the truck makes it pretty expensive.
We got a company called stone shooters out this way. They got like 3 trucks and then some really wierd looking rig sorta like a tower crane. But works like a concrete pump. It can shoot stone on top of buildings or something.
There are at least three co's offering it in this area.....two have two trucks each (one is strictly slinger service, the other is part of a larger construction co) and the third is a concrete company. I believe they have 6 or 7 of them. Mark
I reckon the best part is nobody would be game enough to not pay your bill if you owned one of those.
Hey Ford, were you referencing this one? http://www.macktrucks.com/dealers/assets/custom_images/26_TriCat.jpg
Its sort of funny, that in one area they are commen, and yet in others people dont even know what they are. From my perspective they could be a very vaulable tool, that can be used for a million different purposes.
Dickie is that the one forsale at Nanaimo Mack if so yes plus they have another picture of a Mack Tri-drive with a slinger body on it in the new owners pictures. With our building sites being so tough usually its easier to move the drain rock with a excavator with a clean up bucket.
Thanks for the pictures. They are worth a thousand words. :thumbsup I'd have guessed that was what you were talking about, but I've never seen or heard of one before. :beatsme (We have a handful of members from around western PA. Have any of you guys ever seen one locally?)
How much do these guys charge for that ?? I can't see it being cost effective. For foundations, we place the stone with the excavator or we will dump the stone right in the hole and I take the dozer down in and spread it.
We've used front dump concrete trucks for the same thing, never seen an actual stone slinger around here. The front dump concrete trucks work pretty well, with the right operator.
A couple examples where I've used them. One was a interlocking brick patio at a house with a walkout basement, everything came in/out of the site with either my mini excavator or a rental skid steer. We needed base material brought in for under teh new patio, it was either spend $200 for the skid to rent it again, crew of guys with wheelbarrows, or about $100 extra to have delivered with the slinger instead of a dump truck. Had it brought in with the slinger, driver was able to put it all right where I needed it, I then took maybe 10 minutes to do final grading with the excavator. Was well worth the extra costs, and I simply passed it along to the customer anyway. I've also had the stone for septic beds delivered this way, often the first load is spread, the pipe laid in while they are getting the next load, and then the pipe covered accordingly with the second load. If/when you're placing a septic field with compact equipment, you can't bail a large enough volume with a compact excavator to make it cost effective, and often the skids either don't have reach enough, or have to travel over the pipes to place stone, both not really ideal. Often what I've done is to get the pipe/stone in place then start covering with either the mini ex or a skid steer. Many of the concrete forming companies here are using them in residential housing applications, once the footings and walls are in place, they will use them to place the stone around the footing tile drains and inside the foundation for preparation for pouring the concrete floor. Often there won't be an excavator on site, it's already laft after digging the hole, and isn't back until the foundation is being backfilled. With there being a lot of clay soils in our area, sometimes the foundation needs back filling with sand brought in, I've seen the slingers used to bring this in and a small dozer, skid steer or mini excavator used for final grading in some of the tight spaced housing developments. Mark
One of the replies says 125 an hour. I think it can be cost effective on the right job, with the right circumstance. Take for instance if you had to spread 15 yards of top soil. Typically you may use either a skidsteer, or if your a scab contractor you might hire day labor and lots of wheelbarrows. THis would take hours and maybe youve got a job where you need the skidsteer someplace else. So if you used to slinger, you could just have them deliver and spead at the same time, making it done wayyy faster then the "conventional" method.
I am sure that they prolly have a 3 hr minimum. You prolly pay from the time they leave till the time they get back.
There is i believe a 2 hour minimum, and they also have about an hour to an hour and a half of drive time till they get to my area, but they dont start billing untill they hit the pit. This is just how the company in my area does things, and its actually very slick setup under the right circumstances.
Here they generally charge by the load, but the price will vary depending on the distance involved. Also we're fortunate that there are pits relatively close, I'm right in the middle of three pits, I can be at any of the three in 5 to 10 minutes. About 15 minutes will take you from the pits to the city where the main 'market' is. Mark
Cas came out with a system to suppliment the setup. WHat it is, is another conveyer, thats feeds the bin, so the operation can be continious. So its set up as a tag along with the main unit. So forinstance the truck would roll up on site, and dump trucks, would feed into the slinger; much like a concrete pump.
Out here they are called "agra-cats". When I used to do concrete work we would have them on out difficult sites to backfill basements. We built ICF buildings and often we would form and pour the footing, and then have 1' of 1 1/4" stone blown in to provide a nice dry work environment for stacking the ICF. A lot of the holes we worked in were up to 18' deep. We've also used them to "blow" aggegate into pole buildings that have already been built and are now having a concrete floor put in. A good operator can get the finish grade in minutes, compared to spending an hour with a skid steer.
The quarry near me has a couple. They look like a great piece of machinery to have since it can hual and "sling" so many different materails.:yup There is also this machine which may actually work better in most cases. You can put just about any materail you want into this one too. I actually think it would be worth the $$$$ compared to the stone slinger. http://expressblower.com/
From what I understand, the blowers work better for soils and mulch. It would struggle with sand and rock, however the slinger can do all. But the slinger isnt nearly as accurate as the blower. And that info was from a rep at CAS, which is owned by Rexus, which makes the blower you posted a link to. Both peices of equipment are very, very expensive. But as in contruction, people will pay more for a machine to do it, as long as it equals less man hours.
Stone Slingers. There's a company nearby Albany, NY...(Carver,) that has a couple of these "stone slingers" mounted on Western Star triaxles. Never saw one in operation, but judging by the name of the device, and not being the sharpest tool in the shed myself, I'm not so sure I'd want to be standing out behind 'er when the PTO gets engaged...:spaz I could see a tremendous need for these contraptions in a lot of different locations where access with a hoe, for example, is tough. Filling inside a poured wall, stoning under a slab, footing drainage, etc. I've utilized our local concrete delivery trucks on jobs before, having them bring me 10 yards of stone in a mixer. They charge a measly $1.50/yard more than if brought by a dump truck, and I can have the driver of a front discharger come up to the side of a foundation and "pour" the stone around inside, and a good driver will do such a good job, you barely have to kick the stone around with your shoes when he's done to pour the floor...
i do flatwork concrete and this is the only way we get our stone, the one trucking outfit has a few slingers along with their equipment and dumps. this particular outfit charges by the ton i believe, and a truck fully loaded around here can carry roughly 20.45 tons. its very effective timewise and labor-wise too. i am youger, we'll say just of age to be working construction, and i have placed over 40 tons of stone by myself in under half a day, that included placing the tile around the footer and placing the sump crock, and some other miscelaneous stuff. i am looking into someday starting my own slinger service, i was hoping to gain some sort of input from here so if anyone runs/owns one please feel free to chime in. and anyone else who has any questions feel free to ask, i am around one just about every single day.:usa
stone slinger in action pretty cool to see one of these work if you want to see video go to www.jamconstruction.com click on visuals then click on videos 4 videos of one in action::cool2
There's an outfit over by Schenectady, NY that has one I watched build a rough driveway into a site one day. I guarantee you, a man doesn't wanna be behind it when the driver flips the P.T.O. in gear...:spaz Really a cool piece of iron to have around though!:thumbsup Be nice to have at a hockey game, all preloaded, when a brawl breaks out in the field, as long as it's outside. You'd have total control over the situation in no time... Don't think it'd be too good to use in an indoor rink.:drinkup
around here we just use as gradall material handler with a 1.5 yard bucket to spread the base before they pour.
Stone Slinger Providers J.M. Pereira & Sons,Inc. out of Langhorne, PA rents Slingers. The advantage of a slinger vs. other equipment is that it can both deliver and place the material. So you have to weight the cost of the slinger against the cost of material delivery and the equipment hours you lose placing it once you've got it on site. Another benefit is that none of the stone/mulch/topsoil a slinger delivers is lost to a stockpile.