At Vorstrom, we focus on enabling our clients to efficiently meet their waste management needs, by providing vacuum trucks or trailer mounted vacuum equipment that are truly fit for their purpose.
To show you the process of choosing a vacuum truck for your business, we’re going to give an example from a recent client.
What will the truck be doing?
At Vorstrom, we focus on enabling our clients to efficiently meet their waste management needs, by providing vacuum trucks that are truly fit for their purpose.
To show you the process of choosing a vacuum truck for your business, we’re going to give an example from a recent client.
- Household septic tanks and sewer waste,
- Commercial holding tanks,
- Grease traps,
- Car wash pits, and
- Oily water interceptors.
For this client, their prospective truck would:
- Collect waste from septic tanks, alongside some holding tanks, each day,
- Service grease traps once per month, and
- Service car wash pits once every 6-12 months.
This meant that a liquid vacuum truck was the ideal solution.
How far will you transport the waste?
Our next conversation would involve the distance between the waste collection site and the disposal site, as well as the volume of waste needing collection. Part of this includes verifying what the client’s site access is like, i.e. how difficult it is to collect the waste.
Multiple round trips to and from the disposal location are the biggest contributors to inefficiency. Any non-productive time transporting waste costs money. It’s important to minimise the number of trips required as much as possible.
For this client, we determined that their work was:
-
75% frequent short distance
The disposal location for septic tanks was less than 20 minutes away and the holding tanks were within 30 minutes of the disposal site. -
25% infrequent long distance.
This included travelling for up to three hours out to camps to collect less than 6,000L of waste, plus an hour-long trip each month to collect grease traps.
Which liquid waste truck meets your requirements?
If you had similar circumstances to this client, we would recommend two units as a starting point.
Both are highly capable liquid waste units, but depending on the application, one will be more suitable than the other.
- Tipping tank – saves cost and time, as the unit will not require hosing out.
- 500 CFM pump – faster loading, longer duty cycle and quicker pull-down.
- 12000L tank – less time spent refilling and transporting from larger holding tanks.
- 6x4 drivetrain – superior for slippery sites, with diff lock and cross lock available.
- Larger and heavier truck – may need more hose length to access tanks.
- Bogie drive truck – will mark hardstand surfaces more than smaller trucks.
- Higher cost outlay and running expenses.
- Smaller and lighter truck – easier site access and less likely to cause damage.
- 350 CFM pump – faster loadiquieter than 500 CFM units.
- Faster road speed – quicker to return to sites, which boosts productivity.
- Hose tray connection and control panel – located more accessibly for the driver..
- Lower cost outlay, running and registration costs.
- Non tipping tank – less efficient, as it will require hosing out.
- 350 CFM pump – slower on heavy car wash pits or deep commercial pump wells.
- 8000L tank – may not achieve the same daily workload, due to refills and the added travel time to empty.
- 4x2 drivetrain – can get stuck on surfaces that a 6x4 may not.
- Lower to the ground – can cause some clearance issues.
