A mobile concrete batching plant is something I never saw before. It was also the first truck body I caught that wasn’t built somewhere in the EU. Yet this Swedish-Canadian couple in blue seems to be made for each other.
Usually, the FMX is the preferred choice in the construction business when opting for a Volvo chassis-cab. But the Swinkels brothers chose the FH top model with the bigger tilt cab. The sleeper cab came with a standard, low roof, which has become a rarity in this segment.
An 8×4 tridem axle set-up, the fourth axle is a steering and liftable tag axle. This configuration has become commonplace over the past decade or so, supplanting the traditional 8×4 truck chassis (twin steer at the front, tandem at the rear) more and more.
The hefty tare weight of the whole package is 15,763 kg (34,751 lbs). Given its GVWR of 37,000 kg (81,571 lbs), the payload capacity is 21,237 kg (46,820 lbs).
Now from Sweden to Canada. The water tanks are placed at the front, directly behind the cab. The center section, with the company name on it, contains sand and gravel (in separate compartments, of course). The rear section is for storing dry cement. Additives are also carried aboard.
This goes beyond an on-/off switch. The Bay-Lynx manufacturing company was founded in 1992 and is based in Ancaster, Ontario.
The ingredients get mixed in the lower rear end of the truck body and voilà, there’s the end result of your personal concrete recipe, in the exact quantity needed. Indeed, the entire construction is a downscaled concrete plant on wheels.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this whole concept a Canadian idea in the first place? At least, that’s what I’ve read on the website of another Dutch owner of a similar truck.
Fascinating. I’ve seen these mobile batch plants on trailers but never on a dedicated truck chassis.
The potential for a better final product is certainly there with such a setup as the weird human tendency is to keep pouring water on the concrete mix which is not always beneficial. That said, I have heard these mobile plants are maintenance nightmares. Hopefully this one isn’t.
Frankly, I didn’t even know of their existence. Luckily it said on its side what it was. There was not even the slightest residue of concrete or its ingredients on the whole thing.
Really? Mobile Mini-Mix and others have been operating around here for two decades. I’ve used them a number of times when I needed a small amount of concrete.
Truly. I have never seen a truck mounted one – and I am in enough of a position to have seen them.
The norm here is ready-mix trucks with the rotating drums or pump trucks that haul material from the ready-mix plant.
I see these and many of their other products on the roads in my area quite often. Had no idea they were a canadian outfit.
Interesting products.
Interesting, I’ve never heard of Bay-Lynx but I could walk there from my home.
It’s in an industrial park outside of the city, weird mix of businesses from industrial to dance studios.
There’s some Dutch ancestry at work (and at the top) too, if I scroll through this list:
https://bay-lynx.com/about/
Just coincidence, or is there a certain concentration of Dutch immigrants in your region?
Yup, it’s a bunch of Dutch guys running that business all right.
There are LOTS of Dutch immigrants in southwestern Ontario (including my family). Farmland was a big draw, farmers sponsored Dutch families for farm labour, and a lot of immigrants bought farms after accumulating some money. The Dutch community stayed pretty tight via church & school systems that replicated those in the home country.
Dankjewel!
Loads of Dutch all over eastern Canada and down into the states particlarly NY, PA.
In Ontario these mobile concrete plants are usually truck- chassis mounted. Their nickname is “pick-a-mix” because one can specify the blend of ingredients, at the jobsite to get certain characteristics in your concrete.
They are convenient for small jobs that need less than a truck load of concrete, for jobs that don’t need to meet engineering inspections, and when there’s short notice.
However their concrete quality isn’t as good as the conventional ready mix trucks’ products. “Ready mix trucks are the conventional trucks we usually see, with the big rotating mixing drum. The ingredients are the same, the difference is in the mixing. A ready mix truck, with the big drum can thoroughly blend the ingredients for an hour or more before pouring. The pick -a-mix truck blends ingredients for less than a minute before placement.
The pick a mix result is a concrete that’s less durable under extreme conditions, like heat, cold, weather exposure and high stress. It sometimes won’t pass engineering tests, despite the blend selected.
As a former contractor, I only used “pick a mix” when ready mix trucks truly weren’t available. Both the concrete finishers and any engineers disliked pick a mix and wouldn’t use it unless absolutely necessary. As a manager, I liked pick a mix to get the job done. In my city, ready mix trucks are often booked days in advance. But ‘pick a mix” was always available on very short notice.
Thanks for all that info! Distances are short in NL and there are plenty of concrete batching plants throughout the country, so the norm here is transporting concrete in the ready mix trucks you also mention. Mostly 10×4 truck chassis with a 15 or 16 m³ drum.
We have a few similar trucks in south Florida- we call them site-mix trucks.
They are used for “short loads” when you don’t need the full ten yards of
a regular cement mixer. As prices have skyrocketed they have kept busy.
I used them frequently for small pours but the trucks are typically beat to crap
and leaking fluids. We use plywood to protect any finished areas.
These trucks can be found around my neck of the woods as well.
They are great for shot-crete processes and swimming pool construction.
North Dakota DOT came up with a similar rig that they developed a special mixture for patching roads and filling the ruts on roads. They were after a mixture that would cure quickly and have the durability of concrete. Another issue in ND was long distances for transporting the concrete mix or hot asphalt. The issues with road repairs are, concrete takes to long to set up before it can handle traffic loads and asphalt doesn’t take as long but the traffic load tends to just push the patching material out. Lastly of course is the public gets cranky when you close lanes for road repairs. Blowouts due to hot weather are the worst.
I’ve never heard of these trucks in western Canada.
The concept is sound, but in Alberta ready mix concrete is the norm for construction or roadwork. Its impressive a manufacturing company in Ontario has put this concept together. I guess there is more of a demand for such a concept in that part of Canada.
That’s a clever solution to mix each recipe on site for only the required amount. That way one truck can make multiple deliveries rather than having to drive back to the plant each time. What a huge fuel saver that must be. Pretty sure I’ve never seen one on the road as they are quite distinctive. The concrete plant a couple miles from my home exclusively uses the Terex Advance Front Discharge mixer trucks. The single cab centrally located cabin was a strange sight at first. Kind of like the Mclaren F1 but a whole lot slower.
Yes, I’ve first saw these single cab front discharge mixers in the eighties. In a magazine of course, because way-pre-internet.
When I was a kid, a 6×4 mixer truck was the norm. Then they grew to 8×4 and now, as I mentioned above, the 49/50-tons 10×4 mixer trucks are commonplace. Rear discharge in all cases. The GVW of the current ones is equal to the national gross weight limit, so I don’t expect them to get any bigger.