"Do you think it would “pay much better” than a local haulage firm if you had to run a new 6 wheeler costing approx £65 grand inc body instead "
I dont really want to share all “my numbers” on an open forum Big Truck but I run a s/h 6 wheeler costing less than half that and do well. Neting off some repair costs etc. a new vehicle would cost in a little better ( but I wanted to have an exit strategy in case it all turned to )
Big Truck:
I’m interested to know, your 20t payload 8 wheeler will cost you approx £81 grand, did you consider the possibility of going for an artic
Considering you should be able to deal for a new 6x2 Renault Premium DXi450 with PTO for approx £54000 and a new tri-axle ally insulated Montracon tipping trailer ( I know where there’s 4 of them
A brand new outfit to haul a 30t payload for £76000,saving you 5 grand
I don’t know about Hanson but I know of a couple of local Tarmac o/d’s asked about replacing 8-wheelers with artics and were turned down flat. Maybe the numbers you quote are too good… 
Apparently, they were worried everyone would want one. 
Also, a lot of the artic work is sewn up by a few select firms which Tarmac don’t seem keen to challenge for some reason. 
BigTruck can I ask how much site work you do with the artic? In this area all artics seem to do is plant-to-plant type work. Also, there seem to be a lot of H&S worries about artics delviering to site. I did a 20miler a few weeks back where they were desperate for material. They sent an artic to help and the lads on site looked at him like he had six heads! They parked him up and he was still there when I left the site after tipping my second!
I’ve done plenty of site work with the artic since I started in 2004 (although not so much since I’ve got on this “stone for the boat” number) actually most of it has been for Tarmac some of it steady for two months at a time 
.
It all boils down to the quarry wants tonnage over the weightbridge,so if you have a half sensible man handing out the dockets and he knows the site is big enough and “hard” enough for artics and as long as the driver has a bit of “savvy” too there really should be no problems.
I’ve seen me drawing stone into a large new warehouse building site (IKEA being a perfect example) along with three or four 8 wheelers (8 wheeler men HATE to see artics drawing to sites 
) for the first day,the next day the three or four 8 wheelers have moved onto a house building site and they have been replaced by another 2 hired in artics.
Obviously there are “boggy hole” sites that you don’t go anywhere near but I always laugh when an 8 wheeler blows my doors off flying past as I’m parked up having a wee coffee and I think he’s got to do that run three times to match my tonnage doing it in two 
Big Truck - I see your point about doing two trips to an eight wheelers three but around here that is not strictly an accurate reflection as the rate varies according to the size of truck.
Basically fours are paid as if they carried 14 t. six and eight wheelers get the same rate (at aroung 16t or 20 t ). Artics get a reduced rate which reflects their similar costs but increased capacity and this removes much of the benefit you mention.
Big Truck, alot of it is down to what the customer wants, i.e. they specify 8 wheelers. If thats what they want, thats what the quarry has to supply.
Also if your on for Tarmac, watch out for the new buzz word, Project CORAL. That is coming in in the next few months and is all about customer service, so in other words we’ll have to bend over even more for the same pay.
Here in Northern Ireland hauling out of the quarries seems to be a little more “relaxed” than with you guy’s on the mainland!
Nobody has heard of the WTD/VOSA (our version the DOE are a little bit easier to work with).
The H+S thing seems to be not as strict,although Tarmac who are the tightest are having to shut down one of their three quarries here due to in my opinion having all these OTT H+S rules and not getting the required numbers of hauliers needed to service the work and having to let tonnage go to rival quarries.
Aritcs get exactly the same rates as 8 wheelers, hence where I’ve been hauling out off since May 2006,they used to have six to eight 8 wheelers doing the job now its covered by four artics doing exactly the same tonnage at the same rates
There is a shortage of 6/8 wheelers for exactly the reason I started off with the aritc and if a site manager wants his stone/tarmac,he better be able to cope with artics delivering or he’s going to have alot of men standing around
