When Dave Fretwell from Metal Solutions BOP went hunting for a second truck, he soon realised what he wanted didn‘t exist – so he set about building it himself.
Photo: The Metal Solutions Volvo FM presents exactly what it is, a state-of-the-art scrap collection truck.
Dave and wife Jo own Metal Solutions near Whakatane, and their needs are a bit different from most operators. Following the fruitless search for a ready to work secondhand truck, and the subsequent decision to build what they wanted themselves, the couple settled on a 2011 ex-Fonterra Volvo FM12 as the base vehicle.
“Because we‘re not a trucking company and we don‘t charge out our trucks in the traditional sense, it‘s pretty hard to justify a brand new unit,” says Dave. “ The Volvo offered us a chance to get into a late model, decent horsepower, well maintained unit, which then let us spend the money on a brand new crane, a brand new body, and set it up correctly.” Dave says when he measured the Volvo he found that wheelbase-wise it was pretty perfect. “ They‘ve already got hydraulics, PTO (power take off ), oil tank. Sure the pump‘s the wrong pump, but everything‘s there. The PTO is wired into the cab already to engage the hoist and the crane, and we didn‘t have to strengthen the chassis either. And things like it already had a 50mm ring feeder and was on air suspension, stuff like that just ticked all the boxes.” The Volvo was sent to Koromiko Engineering in Mt Maunganui who built the truck body, using high tensile foldings from Primero Profiles in Auckland, while Dave and his team did the rest of the work in Metal Solution‘s workshop. “ They were able to give us the long one-piece foldings in the 450 grade high tensile steel and we‘re really rapt with what they did.
Photos: Dave and Jo Fretwell. Masterminding innovation, performance and above all safety in the scrap collection business.
Derek and his team at Koromiko did an awesome job – it ‘s got a TRUB (Twin Ram Under Body) hoist, and just tucking them in where they are was a work of art really.” Dave and the team at Metal Solutions undertook some fairly major modifications on the company ‘s first Volvo (also of Fonterra origin) when they started the company five and a half years ago, but this is the first truck Dave has purpose-built for his own company. Dave has a 30-year background in the scrap metal and engineering industries and he‘s supervised several builds when working for other people. This, and the fact he also drives the truck sometimes, gives him a unique viewpoint. “ We‘re a typical small company, I‘m out there along with everyone else, so that gives us the luxury that I can get on the job and go, ‘well, I reckon this would be a great idea on our truck because…‘ And I think that ‘s a little bit unique, because generally speaking in our trade, the guys who are using the gear are not building it.”
A feature all Metal Solutions‘ trucks have is a walk-through headboard.
“I did this on all the trucks I supervised back for my old employer, and it ‘s become even more important now with all the health and safety stuff. When you‘re hiab loading, you‘re up and down all the time unless you‘ve got someone helping you, and if you look at the average scrap truck, the guy spends his time climbing over the headboard. It‘s not fun. That ‘s probably the single biggest thing in the whole rig, and it‘s not a new thing for us because we‘ve done it on every truck we‘ve built.” Dave says it has definitely reduced accidents, as have several other safety features he has installed on the new truck. “ We‘ve spent a lot of time with things like the positioning of steps, and how we‘ve made the handrails. We put in quite a bit of effort so that the driver doesn‘t have to let go with their hands; they can basically slide their hands down the handrail the whole way. And on this one we‘ve got custom steps that we‘ve profile cut and fabricated. We didn‘t need to do that, that ‘s just me being fussy, but they work really well, you don‘t slip on them.” Dave and his team took on the task of fitting the toolboxes, stand-up control and grab mount (which they also designed and built), and moving the muffler, which has been fitted below the chassis on the passenger side.
“ The engineer at Finishing Touch Engineering, who did the certifying, told me he‘d never seen it done. He said plenty of guys had tried to put it on the left-hand side, but he‘d never seen it successfully done.”
Photo: The Volvo shortly after acquisition. A blank canvas for Dave to create his masterpiece.
Palfinger NZ supplied the crane on the Volvo. “It‘s the latest PK 17.001 SLD with radio remote control and rotator. A little extra we added is we‘ve made a drop-in mount for the radio remote on the high stand. We spend a lot of time loading trailers with the truck, parking parallel because you can‘t reach into the trailer, and then loading across, so the driver needs to be in a position where he can see and be safe. He doesn‘t necessarily want to be wearing the radio remote around his waist the whole time because of the climbing up and down, so up on the high stand he‘s got a little docking station and he just drops the radio remote into that. He can leave it there while he steps inside the body and unhooks his chains. It ‘s an expensive little gadget and he doesn‘t have to worry about it getting snagged on anything.”
Dave says his engineering background helps him work out what he can and can‘t do with regard to modifying a truck. “ There are always things that we are still working towards achieving, but we‘re pretty happy with the truck build as it is, we‘ve ticked every box. The grab mount is probably the single biggest improvement on this unit. If you go back to what we were doing and what everybody else does, the grab lives on the front of the body normally. In our game the grab is not left on the crane. In some trucks it is, because they ‘re only self-loading, but what we‘re doing, where we‘re changing from bulk loading with a grab to then crane scale loading with chains – trying to be versatile I suppose – then normally the grab lives on the front of the body. “ With our old truck, the grab stays on the crane a lot more than it needs to, and you can‘t fold the crane up with the grab on, and so we drive around with the crane sitting in the scrap sometimes. It‘s bad for the crane, it‘s bad for the hoses – it ‘s just generally bad!”
Dave says driver Matt Turner was initially sceptical of his plans for the grab mount.
Photo: The grab cradle coming together on the workshop floor.
“I said to him, ‘we‘re buying a brand new crane, it‘s $60,000, you‘re going to be folding it up between every job, but my promise to you is I‘m going to make it easy ‘. So then we set about designing this grab mount that swings out from the chassis. We spent a lot of time mucking around with patterns. The grab would not fit in its normal hanging position, so we‘ve had to make a mount that swivels the grab as part of the parking process, so that it actually fits. It slides slightly under the chassis and just clears the deck, and it literally has no spare room.” Once he‘d figured out how to make it work, Dave did extensive drawings and ordered the profiles before fabricating the mount in their workshop.
As well as Primero, Dave also used Whakatane company East Bay Engineering for some of the profiles. “ They were awesome. It was great because they were local. I could go and sit down in front of their computer and they could draw it while I was there and we could tweak it and make it right.”
Returning to the decision over what to buy originally, Dave says as they don‘t do high kilometres – about 50,000 to 60,000 a year – buying a completely new truck could not be justified. “I reckon we‘ll get four to five years out of this truck, at that point we‘ ll be at about 1.2ks, and it will be time to roll the chassis out and roll another one in. The next one will be way cheaper because we‘ ll have a crane and a body that will go straight across. This gave us the option where we‘d end up with what we wanted.” As well as designing a truck that was exactly what they needed, Dave decided to give Metal Solutions‘ image a facelift as well.
“ We completely changed our image as far as colours go on this truck. We use a local company called Diverse Graphics. Chanelle talked to us and did a number of different options for us to consider. Originally we were going to stay with white, and then Chanelle came to us with a proof that ‘s close to what we‘ve actually done, with a black background, and then they gave us the flip in the white. The black one just looked so awesome, it really popped. While I‘m a little anti painting anything black because it‘s so hard to keep clean, we decided it was just too good not to do it. So we tweaked it a little bit, made some suggestions which they incorporated, and we‘re pretty happy with the end result.”
Photo: Driver Matt Turner at work (note the grab cradle still in the swung out position.
Dave says when they got the truck back from Koromiko, who fitted the crane as well as the body, the hoist was working and the tailgate was on, and the unit just needed painting. “ We took it from there. We took the body back off once we‘d finished a few other things and got it down to Whakatane Blast N Paint for the painting. Brad from Coastline Auto Electrical supplied and installed the side camera and sensors, the lights, and all the wiring. The side camera and proximity sensors protect that blind spot around the passenger door and make it so much easier to manoeuvre. Brad did a great job sourcing all the various components and making the whole package work. It went on the road two weeks before Christmas 2017.” The Volvo will mainly be a scrap metal truck, doing a regular run to Gisborne, up as far as Waihi in the other direction, and through to Tokoroa. Metal Solutions specialise in providing top service over a wide area and the truck will be utilised for both bulk loading with the grab and doing weigh and pay work using the Palfinger crane and a certified 5 tonne crane scale. “Matt is its usual driver. I think on the whole he‘s loving it.”
Making the day a bit easier
Metal Solutions has nine staff in total, having recently brought two young drivers through to a class 4. Matt Turner has been working at Metal Solutions for two years, but had worked for Dave for about five years in another company.
“It‘s a great company to work for and that makes a difference. It‘s only a small crowd but a good one. We‘re all pretty experienced, but the new truck is kind of a reward for all my hard work.”
He says the Volvo has all the bells and whistles, including eight proximity sensors and a reversing camera mounted on the passenger side mirror.
“From the driver‘s seat, you can see down the passengers side when you are backing into narrow places. It‘s really nice to drive and really nice on the road.”
Matt says the new truck is a huge improvement on the old one, a 2002 Volvo FM12 that has done 1.44 million kilometres.
“It has a more modern cab with air con and a modern transmission – I‘m just a simple truck driver, but if you can have the creature comforts of a cab like this, it makes the day a bit easier. It certainly helps with your fatigue.”