Cambridgeshire County Council choose Volvo wheel loaders
Four 8.5-tonne Volvo wheeled loaders were chosen by Cambridgeshire County Council after a successful tender and evaluation process in conjunction with the independent purchasing organization ESPO – (Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation) and replace four outgoing loaders of some 12 years vintage. The primary duties for the new Volvo’s will be handling and loading road gritters with rock salt during the winter months, rehandling used, crushed asphalt and other associated road laying materials as well as general yard duties. The machines have been allocated to Cambridgeshire Highway’s depots located at Huntingdon, March, Witchford and Whittlesford.
Richard Kingston, Cambridgeshire’s highways maintenance manager, commented: ‘Together with ESPO we evaluated the offering made by Volvo and considered the overall package included the purchase price, warranty conditions and after-sales service agreement to be the most competitive and value for money. Since taking delivery in March and April, we’ve so far been impressed with the machines’ performance and Volvo’s close attention to making our operators familiar with their new charges.’
The L45F along with its bigger brother, the L50F, are two relatively new, mid-sized wheeled loaders joining Volvo Construction Equipment’s F series line up and are the first of a new breed of loader to emerge from Volvo’s design team.
With an operating weight of 8,650kg, the L45F’s supplied to Cambridgeshire Highways have been equipped with heavy-duty 1.4m³ high-tip buckets supplied by Ulrich attachments to allow them to handle the material density of rock salt and to load highway gritters in an optimal time. The 4.8-litre Tier III engine’s output of 100hp is matched to the hydrostatic transmission allowing full power shift under load when changing direction and between speed ranges. As with its bigger brothers in the range the L45F sports a Torque Parallel (TP) loader linkage, which provides smooth, parallel lift, high roll-back torque and good lifting power throughout the lift cycle. The Volvo hydraulic attachment bracket facilitates the easy change over of attachments.
The Volvo L45F and L50F wheeled loaders feature separate power steering and load-sensing hydraulic pumps. The advantage of this is that separate pumps ensure full steering power is achieved, regardless of the load on the main hydraulic pumps. Oil flow on the load-sensing pump automatically adjusts to match work demand.
