Road profiling company Bitu-Mill has recently taken delivery of four new tri-axle Trout River Live Bottom trailers from MaxiTRANS, and have said they are “very impressed” with them so far.
Bitu-Mill, which is part of BildGroup, specialises in some of Australia’s biggest road infrastructure projects.
It has divisions in Brisbane, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, working with councils and local departments.
Bitu-Mill purchased its first Trout River in 2018 and now has 16 units in total, five of which are positioned in Victoria, with the rest spread evenly across the other states.
Victorian profiling state manager, Brendan Dixon, said the latest additions to the fleet have been put straight to work.
“They perform quite well,” he said.
“We don’t have any issues with breakdowns halfway through operation or where we need to replace the belts at the drop of a hat, or anything like that.”
The new trailers cart asphalt to Bitu-Mill’s road projects and take away material that has been profiled up with their machines.
“The material goes in through the machine, up a big conveyor belt and then gets spat out the back,” Dixon continued.
“Then, the material gets taken away for recycling. We reuse the material that comes off the roads 95 per cent of the time.”
Since purchasing their first Trout River, Dixon said the trailers’ reliabilty has played a big part in keeping them around.
“The last thing I need is a truck full of asphalt, they go to get it out onsite, and the trailer doesn’t work.
“It’s big money when you’re talking a full load of asphalt, and then it sets in the trailer and it’s all sorts of dramas.
“We’ve never had that problem with this product, so reliability is a really big one for my part of the business.”
Fleet manager Karyna Borg added that a lack of down time works well with what Bitu-Mill is trying to achieve.
“The guys like them because they’re pretty easy to operate.
“We don’t have to give a day training course on how to operate them.
“Generally, it’s just an hour or so and they get the hang of it, and we don’t have to worry about tipping on uneven ground. That saved us a lot of time in that area.”