During a recent attachment demonstration at F&W Equipment’s Orange, Connecticut facility, the companies showed off Ransome’s Exac-One Mini Mower, Exac-One Model PTO300 Log Grapple, Black Splitter S2 800 Cone Splitter, and Gyru-Star Compact Screening Bucket, all of which are now available through F&W in its role as a stocking dealer for Ransome.

During the event, Regional Sales Manager Mark Laigle discussed the company’s addition of Ransome Attachments to F&W’s offerings.

“The more you can broaden your product line, the better off you and your customers are. We’re always looking for attachment opportunities. 90 percent of the time people buying a machine will buy an attachment. We can roll it all into one package,”

he says.

F&W’s connection to Ransome products began when one of Laigle’s regular customers asked if they could purchase a Black Splitter cone splitter from him. Laigle reached out to Eric Ransome, president of Ransome Attachments in New Jersey, and quickly recognized the opportunity to support F&W customers by stocking Ransome products.

F&W’s market position is strongest among midrange contractors that Laigle describes as small mom-and-pop companies with five or six employees. The F&W product portfolio includes Kubota compact and mid-size farm and landscaping equipment, and a full complement of Doosan excavators, wheel loaders, and compact construction equipment, as well as specialty attachments that broaden the capabilities of many of its machines.

Laigle says the Ransome attachments really complement F&W’s equipment lines, citing a recent example.

“My first sale of Ransome’s Gyru-Star Compact Screening Bucket was to Reynolds Nursery, a small nursery in Norwalk, Connecticut. They have customers that drop soil off all the time and they have to screen it through a screening machine, which takes forever. Reynolds was looking for some way to do it faster with a wheel loader. They bought a brand-new wheel loader from me, and I told them we could put the screener on the front of the new wheel loader they bought,”

he says.

Laigle did a product demo for them and says,

“They’re now screening like 20 yards of topsoil in no time at all, and it’s made their life so much easier. They go out of their way to call me and let me know that.”

As a stocking equipment distributor, F&W offers a higher level of service to its customers.

“We’ve grown our business on customer service. When our customer has a piece of equipment that’s down, we either have a part in stock, a replacement machine or a rental unit,”

Laigle says.

“In fact, my first question to Eric was, if a Ransome product comes out of the UK or Germany and I sell a mower to somebody that needs a bearing for the pump, is it going to take six months to get it? We keep in stock the most commonly needed replacement parts here in New Jersey. We are also very fortunate to work with such great manufacturers who can send parts directly to our customers quickly and cost-effectively.”

Eric Ransome assured Laigle that his company stands behind its products.

Laigle notes another benefit of being a stocking distributor.

“I think contractors expect that if something breaks, it’s going to take a day or two to get fixed. As we sell more and more items, the normal wear and tear stuff, if a customer’s attachment goes down, I can give him a rental unit to use while we’re getting parts. Almost every single piece of equipment we sell is available for rental,”

he adds.

“Because F&W is a small family-owned business, this is what we live for. Ransome is the type of teammate we’re looking for, someone that’s going to provide us customer service so that we can provide it to our end-users. We’ve got to get after Eric to get some more products!”

Laigle laughs.

“We are excited to be working with F&W Equipment as its excellent reputation is well known in the area and our quality attachments complement their lines of equipment. I really see it as a mutually beneficial partnership that will continue to grow,”

says Eric Ransome.

The post F&W Equipment Brings Ransome’s Unique Attachments to Connecticut appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.

“We had a hell of a flood on the island with 20 inches of rain,” says the company’s Vice President Ralph Cushnie, noting that he believes this storm was a record breaker.” A bunch of debris came down the river and we basically had a log jam of debris at the Wailua Bridge.”

Cushnie, founded 12 years ago, is a family-owned Women’s Business Enterprise run by Ralph’s wife Laura. The sitework contractor works strictly on the island of Kauai, serving private and public sector clients including local, state, and federal government.

Clearing the Log Jam at a Compromised Bridge

The main problem was heavy erosion damage to the concrete reinforced wall near the north abutment of the bridge, and scouring that was causing instability around several piers, according to Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT). Cushnie was already clearing nearby flood-damaged areas, and owns a unique clamshell attachment so HDOT decided to award the contractor the emergency contract.

The first challenge was a 120-foot uprooted tree that was swept downstream and came to rest against the side of the bridge. Cushnie’s crews worked around the clock for a week to get it removed.

More debris soon followed, but fortunately the raging river never rose high enough for the debris to breach or pass over the bridge.

“Another big rain like this could have knocked that whole bridge over,”

Cushnie says.

Clearing debris from the bridge was job one. Overhead wires prevented the use of a long-reach excavator. Cushnie set up two excavators on the one-lane bridge deck. The machine with the clamshell scooped out the debris and piled it on the deck where a five-man crew downsized it to manageable sections with power tools. Another nearby excavator with a grapple loaded the material into waiting trucks.

The next step was to get the debris to the processing sites. Desirable laydown areas were at a premium because of the flood so Cushnie dumped half in a stadium parking lot, and the remainder at two other locations. The problem that remained was how to process the material efficiently.

Searching for the Right Attachment

Cushnie recalls:

“We had started grinding the logs and they were too big for our shredder to deal with. We were just looking on the internet for something and we came across Ransome Attachments and the Black Splitter Cone Splitter,”

he says.

The problem was that he didn’t want to lose time on the extra processes associated with hydraulic attachments, including switching hoses and unpinning buckets.

The alternative was to mount a hammer on the excavator to split the wood, but damaging the pavement in the stadium would have been unacceptable. Cushnie learned of the Ransome Shark Tooth RST 150 Stump Splitter/Harvester. It had the functionality, but its single serrated edge is designed for sawing and digging out rooted stumps.

 Adding Teeth to the Shark Tooth

The Shark Tooth has a serrated edge on the outside blade with a flat edge and thumb on the opposite side, which works well for its primary purpose – splitting, removing, and loading stumps. Cushnie’s operation called for more teeth because the crew would have to quarter wood on flat surfaces where the timber is not anchored.

“We had nothing to anchor to,” he says, noting that they were cutting on pavement at the stadium and dirt in the other locations. “We were going to put the tooth in and then work it back and forth.”

The clock was ticking. Ransome quickly agreed to modify the attachment by adding a second serrated edge, creating an attachment that looked like a spade with jagged edges.

Cushnie explains:

“The reason we wanted the front edge serrated is because we were basically just pinning the wood to the ground and then wedging the point into it. When you uncurl the arm of the excavator, you’re getting that cutting action on the front edge, while going back and forth and wedging and splitting at the same time.”

 Feeding the Crambo Shredder

The role of the Ransome Shark Tooth Stump Splitter/Harvester was to size down material for feeding into the Crambo 6000 Dual-Shaft Shredder. The shape of the logs was a factor as well.

Dropping a log without a flat edge into the Crambo Shredder would be like running on a log in the water, according to Cushnie.” If you put one of those six-foot logs in the hopper it would roll around for an hour in your shredder,” he says. “If you halve or quarter it, it’s got that straight edge so the Crambo can bite into it and start shredding.”

The majority of the wood came from albizia, a tree that has been deemed an invasive species in Hawaii. The wood was a bit softer and stringier, but splitting it was still challenging because the trees were still green since they had just been uprooted.

The Shark Tooth delivered adequate power, despite being mounted on a mid-size Komatsu excavator. Cushnie says:

“It was all green so it took some effort. Once it dries out, you just tap it and it splits.”

Much of the smaller debris was loaded into the Crambo with a standard bucket. The Shark Tooth was required for splitting stumps and logs over six feet. Chainsaws were used to get the largest pieces down to that size.

Most competing attachments that Cushnie looked at required thumbs to be unpinned, which would have reduced productivity. The Shark Tooth’s can attach to a quick coupler and works in conjunction with an existing thumb. This allowed Cushnie to split and load the Crambo in one continuous process.

The debris was ultimately processed into mulch and given to a local coffee farm and landscaper. No one can accurately predict whether Kauai will see a storm of this magnitude but one thing is sure: Cushnie will be prepared with the right equipment.

Source: Ransome Attachments

The post [Job story] Modified Ransome Attachments Shark Tooth Splitter helps Contractor Save Hawaiian Bridge appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.

Eric Ransome, president of Ransome Attachments, said:

“Our complementary family of attachments for heavy and compact equipment makes Ransome a one-stop-shop for equipment dealers. We have been servicing the construction industry locally and nationally for more than 20 years with quality wood splitters, screening buckets, grapples, concrete pulverizers, post drivers, and more.”

The Ransome three-tied dealer program offers multi-location dealers immediate cash incentives and priority access to inventory while providing attractive pricing, performance incentives, and seasonal promotional opportunities for all dealers regardless of size. Qualifying dealers in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States will be contacted and invited to join the Ransome family of professional equipment dealers.

The article was written by Brian M. Fraley Fraley Construction Marketing

Source: Ransome Attachments

The post Ransome Attachments Seeks Equipment Dealer Partners appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.

Shuler’s Mulch and Grading provides grading services, and supplies mulch, dirt, rock, and sand throughout western North Carolina from its Franklin headquarters. Tony started out running a backhoe service roughly 35 years ago and handles the grading aspects of the business. His son Austin is in charge of material supply.

Shuler’s dislike of waste is what lead him to seek out a screening bucket. he says.

“We always have a bed of nasty root mat and bark and we have to dig it up and haul it off. I wanted a way to screen it because it was too wet to run through the screening plant.”

When he began the search for a screening bucket, Ransome was an obvious starting point since Shuler acquired a Black Splitter S2X 800 Log Splitter from the company in 2015 and had a positive experience. Owner Eric Ransome informed him that he had just picked up the line through Wheatway Solutions Ltd. and planned on getting the first shipment from the UK in the coming weeks. The timing was perfect. Shuler purchased a Gyru-Star Compact Screening Bucket from Ransome Attachments soon thereafter.

He recalls with a laugh:

“Eric said if I didn’t like it (Gyru-Star) I could give it back to him, so shortly after it arrived, I called him and said, ‘come get this thing; it’s not going to work. It’s got plastic teeth, and being in the grading business, we know anything plastic isn’t going to last.”

Ransome agreed to take the Gyru-Star back, but asked Shuler to give it a shot before finalizing the decision. After a half hour of running difficult material through the bucket, the skeptical father and son team reversed course. He admits:

“It’s hard to impress me because I think things ought to work better than they do, but this works really good.”

The Shulers went from being skeptical about the polyurethane stars to believing them to be superior.

“This (polyurethane) works better than the metal because the buckets I’ve looked at with metal crush, too. I didn’t want to crush; I just wanted to separate my limbs, sticks, and root mat from the dirt. This is also cheaper than doing it with those other buckets.”

Shuler has the Gyru-Star mounted on a Cat 308 CR Mini Excavator, although he interchanges it with a bucket as needed. The attachment works both in the yard and in the field.

“I can take it to a jobsite, screen that root mat, get a couple of loads of topsoil, and get $600 to $800 a load out of it,”

he says.

Shuler already owns a large track-mounted screening plant, but it churns out smaller rocks with caked-on dirt, which renders the material unsellable. He had grown accustomed to paying to haul away all of the material for proper disposal. The Gyru-Star has allowed him to extract clean topsoil and small stones and sell them. Shuler not only reduced waste to a fraction of what it once was, but discovered two new sources of revenue in the process.

The Gyru-Star has also improved the mulching process. Shuler typically buys single ground bark mulch from sawmills and regrinds it even though a portion of the material does not require regrinding. He says,

“Instead of running a $600 to $700 dollar an hour grinder to grind it the second time, I’m getting half of it out with this bucket and it’s only costing me $100 an hour.”

Mobility has been a key issue for Shuler, too. He was accustomed to having to set up and load the screening plant while also allowing a 100-foot radius. Now he simply drives the Cat 308 with Gyru-Star bucket to wherever the to-be-screened material lies.

The screening plant also requires ongoing maintenance from greasing to adjusting belts.

“You might run it for two or three hours, and you’re going to spend an hour or two doing something to it. With the Gyru-Star, you just screen it and you’re done.”

Productivity has been impressive as well. Shuler was taking 2 ½ minutes to feed the grinder with a three-yard bucket and cranking out about 2 ½ yards of topsoil per minute. He expects to nearly double that with the Gyru-Star. He says:

“In good dirt, it wouldn’t surprise me if we screen three or four yards a minute.”

But the dirt to be screened is not always good. In western North Carolina, Shuler sits on a mixed bag of clay and sandy soils. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that the Gyru-Star was able to screen the wet material his plant never could. He says:

“It screens the wet just like the dry. That surprised us all.”

The Gyru-Star, originally viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism, has become a game changer for Shuler’s Mulch & Grading. Tony says:

“I’ve got an $80,000-screen plant. If I would I’d have had this (Gyru-Star), I would have never bought that.”

The article was written by Brian M. Fraley Fraley Construction Marketing 

Source: Ransome Attachments

The post Ransome’s Gyru-Star Turns Skeptical Contractor into a Believer appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.