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Benefits of Onsite Mobile Hydraulic Hose Repair

Kia Ora, Raymond McDougall’s my name. I’m the owner of McDougall Logging, currently working out of the Wanganui district. 

We’ve been logging here for about 10 years in this forest for Arbor. We currently have around 25 staff. We run 3 processors, 4-5 diggers, forwarder, and a skidder. We do a lot of 2 staging in this country as it is pretty steep. Skids are pretty small so we have a bit of gear to help with that. We have got two cable haulers, one swinger and one pole hauler. 

The challenges we face out here, are the remoteness. We are up to an hour, hour and a half from town. This country is quite steep and gorgy, so a lot of challenges with getting the wood to the skid sites. Before we got the trailer and container, we used to carry a lot of spares to replace our hoses onsite. If you blew something you didn’t have a spare for, it was pretty much, get hold of the hose doctor in Wanganui or Raetihi, and then meet them or wait for them. 

This BOApod on the trailer, we’ve had this almost coming up 3 years now. They set a container up for us, and then these [BOApod] came out. So, we were one of the first to jump into the trailer, which certainly has been well worth its weight in gold. Because we can just hook it to the Ute and shoot off, we leave it pretty much in between the two crews. 

The main reason we went to the onsite pods with BOA is, they’re on the job, they’re onsite. 

You blow a hose that you don’t have a spare for and you’re up and running in 15 minutes. And also, spare hoses aren’t floating around in bottoms of machines getting covered in oil. We are not reliant on other contractors to come in. As we all know there is a lot of paperwork with onsite contractors and sub-contractors. This way here, you take care of this yourself. We don’t have to sign individuals in, and meet them at gates if they don’t have RT etc. You could be waiting anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half for a hose doctor to get out here. If they are in town, like I say, we are a good hour to the site. So straight away there is an hour and half that you are waiting to be up and running again. 

Wherewith this onsite, 15 to 30 minutes max. If you weigh that up out of a week. If you have an operator error and they tear a hose off or something. You virtually have saved two hours, maybe two and a half hours for that week, which is definitely a savings.

Watch Part I of McDougall Logging customer success here.

This BOApod on the trailer, we’ve had this almost coming up 3 years now. Because you can hook it to the Ute, and shoot off, it is just real accessible. All your main fittings are quite detailed in these drawers. 

I am no Einstein, and I can work it out, so they are pretty easy. And even all the guys in the crew, we have 3 or 4 guys in each crew that can make a hose up, that’s how simple it is. 

With the press here, everything is on a pull-out, so you can get to it easy, get the hose in and out. We have got the hose reel, they are all on electric motors, and they pull out really easy. Nice and tidy. And when you buy a new one, you just thread it on. All the sizes are there ready to go. We normally bring the blown or broken hose up here [to the BOApod]. There is a range of different hose sizes that we select from to get the right size. Then you just come in here, and your charts that they’ve got are quite simple to read. You just go off your charts, go in here, and everything is in here. It is all detailed, it is all numbered with the codes and with what is up on the sheet there for your crimp spec and your thread sizes. 

Once you’ve got your hose and your fittings, then you pretty much select what you have got to press it too. And your dies are in here. And then you adjust the number on the end [of the micrometer] and - hey presto – you’ve got a hose, and you are up and running again. 

They have got lots of storage, so we have a selection of already blown hoses that we leave here. If we need to make one up, we just grab one out, and all the measurements are there, so someone can whip it up, while the operator is pulling the old one off. 

It’s cost-effective, it minimises our downtime which makes us more efficient. 

Watch Part II of McDougall Logging customer success here.

We are doing proactive maintenance which is a big help. And also, it does give the guys another skill. Some of them might enjoy making the hoses up and want to take it on.

The benefits are, we have minimised downtime by having this onsite, or accessible to the sites. 

The parts and the hoses are at a real reasonable price, and it is good quality, with the Yokohama hoses. And, also the proactive maintenance - picking up worn hoses and being able to change them before the blow. 

1. You haven’t got the downtime onsite
2. You are not pouring oil into the ground
3. You’re not holding the crew or a truck up because you can get it sorted before it blows to pieces. 

The Yokohama hose that we are using, we’ve had no issues at all with it. We are running three processors and a fair bit of gear here and we’ve had no issues with it at all. It is easy to work with and certainly durable for the machines it’s on. 

For the re-ordering, BOA has an app for that [BOAhub]. It is just a simple barcode. All we do is take a photo of these and send that through. And they send it down in the post and we have got it in a day or two days. 

For my business, the BOApods have really helped out in so many ways. As I say, they are cost-effective and having the ability to do proactive maintenance. If you are a one-man crew, or a 10-man crew, these things I would recommend. Due to the fact that they are an asset. The money that they save you in downtime, and pouring oil on the ground, outweigh the cost of the trailers. If you look at it overall, they are certainly beneficial for what we are doing out here. 

If you are remote, I can’t see why you don’t have one. I would recommend it to anyone that is 30-40 minutes out of town - you will save money.

Watch Part III of McDougall Logging customer success here.