Located on the Atlantic coast, a community council has just purchased a mini-excavator for its technical services so that they will always have a public works machine available for its road works and beach cleaning operations. The council purchased an R25Z-9A mini-excavator from Motard, the local dealer for Hyundai Construction Equipment.

 

With many beaches over two kilometres long in its area, the community, like all its neighbours, needs to carry out many public works throughout the year - landscaping, pavement repair, clearing tree roots on the highways, road edges and gutter repairs. And being in a coastal location, they also need to replace and sift sand on the beaches, install waste bins in summer, remove the winter fencing and so on.

To hire or to buy?

This is the question the town confronted: whether to continue hiring a machine from a third party when they needed one, or to buy their own excavator. "We discussed the issue of hire or buy, and we eventually opted for buying. Purchasing our own excavator means that it is always available when we need it, whereas hiring means certain restrictions: we have to make a call to reserve a machine, and then go and fetch it, which entails additional expense to the hire costs. And then, if we had to carry out some minor works lasting just half a day, we were paying the equivalent of a full day. Now that we have our own machine available, we use it every day, because it is fairly versatile and compact, which is ideal in the town" explained the Community Council's highways and beach-cleaning manager.

Its compactness was actually one of the criteria used in selecting the machine: "It had to be manoeuvrable for work we carry out in the urban environment, where space is often limited. But it also had to be powerful enough to pull out roots, for example," he added. The four criteria we used to make our choice were manoeuvrability, power, versatility, and compactness.

"So after putting the purchase out to tender, and having received several bids, we chose Motard, Hyundai Construction Equipment's dealer in our area, and purchased the R25Z-9A mini excavator, taking delivery in February" continued the highways officer. "Moreover during this bidding process, we also insisted on testing all the machines; our operators really liked the R25Z-9A and their opinion was very important to us" he added.

The R25Z-9A, a mini-excavator in the 2.6 tonne category

This mini-excavator is fitted with a Mitsubishi tier IV engine with a Z qualification (Z= turning radius zero, which means that it can turn within its own footprint, and is thus able to operate within extremely restricted spaces), and with buckets with up to 0.07 m3 capacity. It is particularly important for small construction equipment, because the mini-excavators are often put to use in difficult environments, with low visibility or poor lighting.

 

The R25Z-9A's cabin has a suspension seat, foldable pedals, a sensitive joystick, and a storage area for increased operator comfort. The instrument cluster displays warnings, and contains a cooling water temperature gauge, a fuel gauge, and an hour meter for the operator to check the status of the machine at a single glance. Moreover, the low noise level inside the closed cabin is just 82 dB(A), while outside it is only 94 dB(A). Another important factor in the design of the R25Z-9A model is its easy access for maintenance. All the doors, covers and engine hoods can be fully opened, and all the service points are located in the same area so the daily checks can be efficiently carried out.

The R25Z-9A has a maximum digging depth of 2,420 mm, and a digging reach of 4,480 mm. The R25Z-9A model is fitted with two travel speeds (2.5 and 4.5 km/h), so it can be used at low speeds in delicate working environments or at higher speed on construction sites.