Gradall Industries has introduced a Storm Recovery Series collection of excavators that are designed to help municipalities and contractors tackle the aftermath of weather disasters.
Gradall excavators can be driven on highways at 100 km per hour, without the need for a lowboy trailer. The speed of the machines allows them to get to disaster sites quickly and remove fallen trees and debris to create access for other emergency vehicles.
“The summer and fall of 2020 is predicted to be a busier-than-normal hurricane season, from the Gulf Coast, around Florida, and continuing up into New England,” said Mike Popovich, Gradall vice president of excavator products.
“We are working closely with our distributor network, especially in these areas, to make these Storm Recovery Series machines readily available to help first responders access and clean up disaster areas very quickly.”
On a disaster site, and during the recovery process, the excavators can be equipped with a wide range of useful attachments including fixed-thumb grapples, tree limb shears, boom extensions and buckets, which enables them to collect and load tree limbs and trunks, rocks, household debris and building materials into trucks, as well as open drainage ditches and waterways.
Gradall models with highway speed undercarriages include the XL 3100V at 18,565 kg with a 8.3 metre boom reach; XL 4100V at 22,536 kg with a 9.2 metre boom reach; and XL 5100V at 26,158 kg with a 10.3 metre boom reach.
Gradall’s highway speed machine collection also includes Discovery Series models, developed in collaboration with Freightliner.
The industry’s first crossover excavator models, with a Gradall upper structure integrated into a Freightliner truck chassis, Discovery Series models are designed for municipalities. The series features two-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive models that weigh from 14,605 kg to 15,649 kg and have a boom reach up to 7.6 metres.
All Gradall machines are equipped with a telescoping, fully tilting boom, enabling operators to correctly position attachments for faster debris removal.
The low working profile boom design enables Gradalls to work under bridges and tree limbs, reaching into piles of debris and handling work that conventional knuckle boom excavators cannot.
