Quick-switch mixing: dress your chassis for the season

Concrete Producer, The, July, 2004 by Rick Yelton

Fleet managers whose vehicles deliver product north of the Mason Dixon line understand the need to adapt to the current season's weather. This is even more important when business slows. It would be a major advantage to find a way to keep making money, despite the weather or sales.

This is the spirit that leads Jean-Francois Hotte to help his customers in the lower Gatineau Hills, just west of Montreal. Hotte's manufacturing company, Equipements Lourds Papineau (ELP), focuses on building snow removal attachments for class 8 vehicles. In working with his customers, Hotte noticed many of his area's dump truck delivery trucking contractors found it difficult to quickly switch from summer to winter operations.

Hotte and his team developed and fabricated the prototype for a dump truck body system that would revolutionize the way drivers maximize the way they use their trucks. His system, developed in 1995, is known across Canada as the SBI100 Interchangeable Box System.

Over time, ELP designers have improved and refined the system to accommodate more body types and equipment applications. The design allows great flexibility in each application.

15-minute conversion

Hotte's innovative system enables a driver to change his vehicle from a mixer truck to a dump truck or to add salt-spreader body in about 15 minutes. The system consists of a "male" frame welded to the truck chassis. The support of the body is similarly attached to a "female" base, so when it is positioned on the truck chassis, it fits into the male piece and is locked into place. ELP makes all of the chassis and body modifications.

The chassis is first equipped with a hydraulic pump and the appropriate quick-change hoses that power either the loading wench or the body equipment. If a truck chassis is to be used as a concrete mixer, the factory installs a special hydraulic unit with adequate power and oil capacity to operate a mixer drum.

In many cases, when a fleet manager elects to equip a chassis with an SBI100 system, he orders more than one body attachment: a dump body, water tank, and perhaps a flatbed configuration.

With the SBI100, the driver makes a body change and first unlocks the female kit from the male kit. He then activates a small hydraulic cylinder that lifts one end of the male kit just enough to encourage the female to slide by gravity to the rear of the chassis. The female kit is attached to the hydraulic winch that helps control the rate of detachment.

During the detachment process, two sets of supporting legs unfold from their stored position on the female kit to lock into a vertical position for storage support. So when the detachment process is completed, the detached body is positioned at about wheel height from the ground.

To switch to another body, the driver pulls up, attaches the winch hook to the pull ring on the female kit, and then draws the new body into position on the male kit for locking.

Busy in bad weather

For ready-mixed concrete producers, flexibility is one of the system's best features. Producers have found the system keeps drivers busy on rainy days. "If it's a rainy afternoon, drivers can drop their mixer kit and install a dump body to haul sand or rock," says Michael Lemieux, ELP's vice president of operations.

Other producers have installed the quick-change system to increase their deliveries. They've opted to install the system on their haul tracks to allow them to haul aggregate in the afternoon, and then be ready to haul fresh concrete in the morning. The extra capacity, especially on the first round, helps keep later deliveries on time. In almost all of these cases, fleet managers only equip about 10% of their small fleets.

Most producers opt for drum kits of about 8 to 10 cubic yards, but one customer recently ordered a 13-cubic-yard kit. "They operate on the mine roads in northern Quebec, so there's no need to stay legal," Lemieux explains.

Most of the mixer kits have been with units manufactured by London Mixers. But Lemieux says their shop has drawings from the other major rear-discharge mixer manufacturers, so practically any style and size can be fitted for a kit.

To learn more about ELP and the SBI100 body system, visit www.elp.ca. The manufacturer has established a U.S. division with a dealer network. Telephone ELP-USA at 518-424-3083 to learn where the nearest dealer is.