New hedge cutter unit delivers major saving

Michael Tomlinson tried out a new hedge cutting unit from Major Equipment for his hedge cutting business, and achieved savings of £100 per week on fuel costs alone.

Michael Tomlinson has been hedge cutting since 1982, operating from near Uttoxeter and serving a wide range of agricultural and rural clients in Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Warwickshire.

Usually starting the hedge trimming process from July, through to the following March, his company works on all kinds of hedging styles and types, so they need the right equipment. In the past, Michael’s company had been using solely flail hedge cutting units to deal with typical hawthorn hedging on farms and evergreens in the rural suburbs.

“Using a flail hedge cutter head on typical thorn hedges is fine,” said Michael, “but on many of the evergreen hedges, it’s not good. We found that the draft coming from the flails rotating would cause the tips of the hedges to blow away from the blades and it was often difficult to maintain a straight, neat cut. Also, it would leave large clumps of un-mulched clippings that would collect and leave an unsightly mess. So, we had to do something about improving our service because it needs to be a professional finish, every time.”

Michael heard that a hedge cutter unit was being launched by Major Equipment, a company well known for manufacturing high-end mowers capable of handling the roughest and toughest of work environments. He tried a demo unit from dealer G Richardson Agri Ltd, in Cheshire, on his Shelbourne Reynolds HD 865 VFRT.

“It was just a matter of removing the flail head and re-attaching the Major rotary head. What I immediately found was that it required much less oil flow to the head drive and therefore much less engine power, and would likely reduce my fuel costs,” Michael explained.

Major’s 1.43m hedge cutter head, fits directly to most hedge cutter arms on the market without modifications. It has a total head width of 1.6m and a cutting width of 1.43m. It only requires around 36hp to drive and an oil flow of just 80 litres per minute at a maximum of 170-bar pressure. The Major Hedge Cutter comes fully galvanised for long life protection against corrosion.

“Once we started using this new Major hedge cutting head, we calculated that compared with our flail heads, we were saving around £100 per week on fuel costs alone, purely because it was so much easier to drive. It mulched the evergreen clippings about the same as a flail head, but taking into consideration the fuel savings alone, on an annual basis, we are saving as much money that would buy the equivalent of another Major hedge cutter head for free, and that’s impressive!”

For more information, contact Major Equipment directly or visit the Major Equipment website

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