After last week’s Volvo FH, things only got heavier. A 2019 Volvo FMX concrete mixer truck was feeding a 2016 MAN TGS concrete pump at a construction site nearby. The work in progress: a new, two-storied office building.
The FMX is the heavy-duty version of Volvo’s mid-size FM-series of trucks and tractors. This 10×4, with a day cab, has a 428 DIN-hp engine with 12.8 liter displacement.
Dual wheels on the drive axles, super singles on the three steering axles. For reinforcement reasons, the Volvo has a full frame inner liner. The truck’s legal maximum gross vehicle weight is 49,000 kg (108,027 lbs). We’re talking serious truckin’ business here!
The Schwing-Stetter company built the complete concrete mixer unit. The capacity of the drum on a 10×4 chassis is usually 15 m³ (530 ft³). That’s a mighty quantity, given the vehicles’ compactness.
The concrete gets poured into the pump’s big mouth, at the rear side.
The pump, a Cifa K52L, was partly hidden behind some construction site fences and other materials. It’s mounted on a 2016 MAN TGS 10×4 truck with the same chassis configuration as the Volvo: dual steering axles at the front, then the tandem drive axles and last but not least, a steering tag axle. The registered curb weight of the whole machine is 47,920 kg (105,646 lbs).
The MAN is powered by a 12.4 liter engine, good for 480 DIN-hp.
I found an almost identical set-up on the website of the concrete pump manufacturer, Cifa is an Italian company.
Ending with this streetview, pouring wet concrete on a wet day.
Related article:
CC Global: Terberg, MAN And Ginaf 10×4 Dump Trucks – Heavyweight Champions
I’ve also heard them called “ready mix” trucks, by the companies who run them.
Conner wants to get his trailer hooked up.
I drove a few concrete pumpers in my career, the five axle ones were the worst rides EVER. Throw a golf ball in a milk jug and shake it – that’s you in there. Not enough head room, you either broke your spine from the seat bottoming out or you broke it from your head hitting the roof. The ones I drove had adjustable belts on the seat to floor connections, let all of the air out of the seat, pull the safety straps tight, put on your seat belt and pull that tight, kind of like being duct taped onto a bull at the rodeo. The ride is rough but at least you don’t have to worry about flying off.
Theres two types of concrete truck indistinguishable from the outside though it relates to how the fins are configured inside the bowl one is a mixer which can mix dry ingrediants as they are fed in and the other type is an agitator which will keep batched ready mixed concrete sufficiently useable while travelling to site, mixing is very hard on trucks they have to run at high rpms for long periods mixing the concrete to the right slump for delivery to site, Ready mix agitaytords are loaded from a high mounted mixing bowl with concrete at the correct slump already mixed ready to go,
Ive driven both types and delivered hundreds of tonnes of soft rock to building sites the type of batching plant is the best way to tell what type of truck youre looking at is unless you can see into the bottom of the bowl at the start of the spiral.
Thanks for the extra info, Bryce.
Ready mix in this one. Mebin (the company name on the truck) is a daughter of the globally operating HeidelbergCement Group.
Below an example of what we generally call a “betoncentrale”, a concrete central/station. There are around 30 Mebin stations in the Netherlands.
Here is a wonderfully-named Putzmeister pumper on a Mack MR chassis. Twin-steer, tri-drive and I guess two lifting tag axles. Doesn’t look too maneuverable.
Yeah, Putzmeister is a renowned name in the business.
Since late 2019, this is Europe’s biggest concrete pumper. Axles 1,2,3 and 6 are steering axles (because at some point you have to take a corner). It started as a factory MAN heavy-duty 8×4 chassis, lengthened and converted by the Dutch Wierda company.
Schwing builds pumpers in Minnesota. Way back in the day I was sent on a service call to Schwing to check out a truck that would not start. They were pretty irate that this piece of junk GMC wouldn’t start. Checking out the truck I found a blown fuse, dead short in the circuit. Found sheet metal screws installed on one side of the firewall had pierced a wiring harness on the opposite side. Pointed out the issue to the customer, now they are a little more grumpy. About a week passes and I get called out again. Got another one of these junk GMC’s that won’t start. They are adamant that its the truck this time for sure. They rerouted the add-on stuff to the inside of the truck. Well you guessed it, now they drove the screws into a harness on the other side of the firewall again. Same circuit, dead short. I thought the guy was going to explode when I showed him the damaged harness. We didn’t sell them to many more Brigadiers after that.