My Red Rhino Experience written by Dick Searle Dick Searle Plant Hire. Inc.

I must admit that I had many a sleepness night regarding the purchase of our Red Rhino 5000 back in 1998, having been in the Plant game for over 35 years I have bought many a good machine but also some absolute cr*p as well, so with all this in mind and the Red Rhino sounding quite expensive at first, but in its favour you could certainly see the Waste and Recycling band wagon growing all the time which helped my decision to purchase a mobile crusher three years ago!!

But which make and model?

Having seen and operated other makes first, the Red Rhino 5000 came well out on top in everyway that is important when not only crushing but transportation etc as well. We needed a model that’s big enough to cope with high volume crushing but could also be carted legally to and from site on one of our 7.5 ton beavertail lorries, these lorries normally have a payload of approx 3 to 3.3 ton, taking into account that the Red Rhino 5000 with a full tank of diesel and a few spare 25 litre diesel drums as well it all worked well weight wise ,also another thought was that the 5000 could also be legally transported by a Land Rover / Range Rover or similar 4×4 with a trailer.

We find the 5000 very easy to move around site especially with its umbilical cord which we use to get it to the near enough position for crushing from the delivery lorry to the uncrushed pile, from then on we use the levers for the small movements required around the piles. Being a tracked machine as well it will go most places where a minidigger will go and even up some steep muddy inclines.

The finished crushed concrete product that the Rhino produces was another big consideration, we can do 100mm plus right down to near on dust, we find 50mm down is the size most people want, the very easy method of just pulling a lever to reduce or enlarge the crushing sizes is easy compared with other manufacturer’s agricultural methods , the 5000 also produces a nice angular and consistent crushed shape which makes it ideal for power ramming ie, wacker plate or roller etc. the shape makes it ideal for good strong compacting, We have actually have had our crushed concrete approved by our local building control council so it can be used in new house or extensions oversites, this is great news , it was not many years ago that the council did not like the use of crushed concrete because of its poor quality! We also find that it can now be used as hardcore under block paving especially now with the new front garden paving laws in place, we actually found out by mistake that crushed concrete laid ,power rammed and blinded lets the rainwater easily through after a weekend of heavy rain on one of our driveway jobs but another area that was at the laid at the same time using Limestone hardcore was heavily puddled and not workable for a few days whereas the newly laid crushed area was bone dry and ready for work to enable us to continue work straight away, another plus or two for the rhino !

The idea at purchase time was to offer an already local pre-advertised operated mobile concrete crushing service in Cambridgeshire, sending one man as operator, Rhino , diesel ,collection / delivery for a days localish hire at around £400 to £450 + vat, diggers and breakers etc all extra , this worked well from the word go, www.cambscompactcrushers.com was born as a "bolt on " to my long established digger hire / groundworks contracting firm. www.dicksearleminidiggers.co.uk but we found as the recession loomed it often became better to quote for the job ,this does mean you need to go and have a look at the job first but we found it can also be very beneficial because the crushing job would often bring in more work, we have gone to look at many crushing jobs and ended up not only doing the crushing but demolition of buildings or breaking the customers concrete up first instead of them doing it ,crushing it, laying it and doing footings even laying customers driveways ,also selling them aggregates, Grab-away etc as well, all this just by going to look to quote for a customers crushing job!
We also found that some potential customers like a firm price than a day rate, as a rule, under twentyish ton of un-crushed we do on price over that amount we find the customer will generally pay the above hire costs because they know, once you explained the cost saving to them to crush on their site that labour, skips, new hardcore bought in will cost loads of ££s more than the daily hire rate! But if a customer has only got say 3 ton to crush they will be very reluctant to pay the days hire so we find give them a nice price that fits in with us to crush when were in the near area or on the way back from another hire. We have also never ever had complaints about noise or dust (dust suppression kit is fitted as standard) and in fact most people even the customers near neighbours think that its most interesting and its all about recycling nowadays, many people like to see the uncrushed go in one end and come out the other end all ready for use in a nice neat pile, they can get fascinated by it all!

But in the meantime we have found that our Driveway subsidiary,www.digyourdrive.com is seeing a flourish as people are not moving but improving their home which is good for firms like us we would rather people improve than move! So the Red Rhino is often seen in working action on customers old concrete driveways ,we have done many many driveways now where the customers old 1970/80s concrete is broken up with our digger mounted breakers ,another digger puts it into the crusher where a dumper catches it off the conveyor belt, then taken and tipped to the area to be hardcored ,laid ,leveled and wacked ready for use all in under a 10 minute cycle, now that’s proper recycling, no skips, no grab lorries ,little labour as mainly machine work and of course no bought expensive limestone or MOT type one , all good stuff both for the customer and its neighbours, good for contractor or should I say very good for the contractor ,oh and great for the " Green brigade " don’t forget them !!

In the last year or so we have now expanded our services to Grab lorry hire , www.giftofthegrab.com and we now find that the Rhino really is the all-round piece of kit that we had hoped it would be, we get a real buzz when the Grab lorries come back to the yard after picking up concrete ready for crushing from the customers premises ,tipping it ,crushing it and in many cases the same customer buys their own concrete back in a few days time, “Double bubble” We sell it either loose or now in one tonne builders bulk bags after the purchase of a conveyor belt on EBay where a minidigger loads the hopper / conveyor which goes straight into the bag which is held open in place by a forklift, once full , forked over to be weighed on a set of platform scales ,(EBay again) ready then for loading on the lorries or stacking for later! For the bulk bag use we tend to crush the concrete to 25mm down, quite small because when the customer open the bags they find it so much easier to use and shovel than any bigger stuff,this we call, concrete type one, customers who buy it in bags generally have smaller projects to do anyway but not always the case as we have sold many a ten bags per customer, we can get upwards of £30 per bag for good quality crushed plus delivery for our crane lorries.

We are getting known now for our quality crushed concrete ,its a refreshing change from the bigger firms whose idea of crushed concrete is what they call a "3 inch crusher run " which im led to believe means that the jaws are set to 3 inches and everything and anything is put through this includes pieces of concrete up to 5 inches big coming out the other end huh ?, skip waste ,loads of wire, metal ,wood ,70% dirt oh and a tad of crushed concrete ,generally this is very poor stuff and does give crushed concrete a bad name! When we are asked to excavate concrete by the customer we try to keep it clean as we can shaking the dirt of it as best as possible breaking up into the right size for the Rhino and being careful when excavating so we do not get loads of dirt with it, but of course when we grab up concrete from a customer it can have all sorts of rubbish and dirt in with it, but we do find that builders and customers etc are slowly but surely getting better in sorting their waste out into different piles as the recycling thing is gradually hitting home!
So that’s nearly our story so far, since owning the Red Rhino 5000, I have not bought an ounce of Limestone or MOT type one for years and we do build loads of driveways etc in a year, all of our jobs we are using our own crushed concrete, this alone has saved thousand ££s per year, plus we are selling it after being paid to take it away and also we still go out on hire with the Rhino ,now I know your saying that were certainly not the first to do this, of course were not far from it this has been happening for years and all this is still bloody hard work and it will not make you a millionaire and you need all the legal waste licenses etc but it is certainly good honest hard work, every day is different and the" weeks just fly by". Remember this is just my story from my sleepless nights regarding the original Rhino purchase a few years back to date, the Rhino has very nearly paid for itself in mobile hire alone but more than paid for itself in the use back in the yard! The crusher itself is still in very good presentable condition, somehow very low hours as I suppose its used in smaller bursts now, same original crusher plates, we find that as they become worn the crusher gets even faster, same original belt ,battery ,tracks are still like new, we have had to tighten a few nuts n bolts now and again ,we made larger steps for both sides to make any platform work more comfortable for the operator we fitted more grab handles to suit ourselves, regularly over- serviced which a must with this sort of machine also a must is to blow out the air cleaner on a very regular basis, we bought a new small portable little air compressor which we take with us on hire to blow out the filters at the end of the day this will help to prolong the engine.
So you see a purchase of a new Red Rhino can get to you and you will sadly start taking notice of potential piles of uncrushed concrete in your area and saying "I can crush that”! You will be picking up stones ,lumps of concrete from your other jobs which at first you think your being a “skinflint” but remember it does not take long to pick up a ton of uncrushed that you can turn into £30.00 bag full! So it really can work for you, whether you’re like us already in the Plant hire “game” or even a totally new career move! The Rhino will certainly bring in other work as well, every “Man and his dog” has got a minidigger but very few a useful concrete crusher! Word soon gets round your local area , we did and still do lots of local advertising ,eg , local evening paper ,parish mags, flyers, local radio with a jingle saying " Were comin to crush your Rocks" we also told local plant hire firms to put any crushing jobs our way ,but a good little tip which we have done was to put the Rhino on one of our lorries and park it at a local busy builders merchants gates for all the builders to see for a few hours ,we have also done the local B&Q on a very Saturday morning which sits on a busy road. We also send literature to potential demolition customers who have appear in the local papers requiring planning permission! We also lucky enough to do a “Green day” at Cambs County Council Recycling yard which was televised as well, The Council even purchased a Red Rhino on the strength of our demonstration over other competitors, all this sort of stuff helps until you get established.

Plus of course, Waste & Recycling is big massive business which is growing buy the day and in these troubled times in the building industry its nice to see one area that is doing well and will continue to grow, So there you are, my Red Rhino story I do hope it helps any future Red Rhino purchase you have in mind, I am not related to Red Rhino in any way just in case that’s what your thinking, just my story and remember I had sleepless nights as well but don’t have sleepless nights anymore as I’m to tired now from the days concrete crushing!

Thank you for reading!