Between a rock and a hard place

Any quarry is a tough environment for both man and machine to work in but the rock extracted at the Aggregates Industries site at Duntilland Quarry is tougher than most.

The site, situated between Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland produces and processes over 1.25 million tonnes of quartz dolerite each year, used in the construction of motorways and infrastructure sites across the UK and Europe.

Productivity
Productivity is critical so the use of small machines in the quarry is vital to keep the flow of traffic clear and ensure supplies of aggregates get from the site to where they are needed.

12 years ago, Duntilland made the decision to move away from traditional tyres due to the daily occurrence of replacing damaged and punctured tyres caused by the hard rock shards. As the workforce operates mainly at night, not only was it expensive to replace whole tyres, but there was an additional cost through downtime waiting for the tyre fitters to attend to replace the damaged tyres.

The airBOSS wheel system resolved this problem for Aggregate as well as saving that company significant cash and time.

As Keith Cooper, the Assistant Operations Manager at Duntilland explains :
“We made the decision to use airBOSS shortly after buying the 1CX from JCB. Replacing the segments rather than the complete wheel keeps the machine continually moving without the loss of production and downtime. We also recycle segments which we periodically fit to the machine to even out the wear and tear. We do our own maintenance in house and using airBOSS means we no longer have to rely on external fitters to replace damaged wheels.”

The rock here is extremely harsh on wheels and tyres so having one less thing to worry about makes our job just that little bit easier. This year we replaced two of the steel rims for the first time in 12 years since fitting the airBOSS system so we are very happy with them. They can take a great deal of punishment which is what we need from our equipment.”

Find out more
If you’d like to know more about how airBOSS can help keep your machines working and save you money call us on +44(0)1242 577877 or email us on sales@airbosstyre.com