Lyne Grounds Maintenance takes delivery of new Isuzu 7.5-tonner

Lyne Grounds Maintenance's new Isuzu 7.5-tonner has been specified with a Harsh HH6 hookloader.

The Balderton-based company was looking for a truck with maximum cargo handling capacity and the ability to easily access on- and off-road sites. Lyne Grounds Maintenance operates across the East Midlands covering services including the upkeep of all types of grass surfaces, tree pruning and removal, hedge cutting and clearance of unwanted vegetation. 

Owner, Doug Lyne, said: “The little Harsh unit totally fits the bill and is an absolutely perfect match for the 7.5-tonne Isuzu chassis. It’s a truck that we can take to wherever we are working, which includes open fields, rural lanes, schools, sports grounds, hospitals and private clients. 

“We have two bodies for the hookloader, the first being a high capacity cube body and the second a flat platform. Whilst the big box body is generally used for moving woodchip and other cut-down vegetation, it’s also ideal for transporting equipment such as our tracked chipper. As with the platform body, the ability to load our various pieces of kit on the flat at ground level makes everything very easy, as well as being much safer for our staff. 

“With a hookloader body on the ground we obviously don’t need long loading ramps for our grass mowers etc to climb up. We simply take all our equipment for whatever job we are doing in the bodies, so we don’t need trailers either. Altogether, it’s a great system.”

The HH6 model hookloader has a 6-tonne lifting capacity from a single lifting cylinder and can carry containers between 3.8m and 4.3m long. A conventional PTO is operated via a handheld remote control to allow good visibility over loading and unloading and it has a maximum tip angle of 52 degrees. 

Lyne added: “For a small business such as ours, going down the hookloader route offers some really big benefits. I’d say that in reality the Harsh hookloader system effectively doubles the work capacity of the truck, and therefore increases our overall efficiency and productivity very considerably.” 

Harsh business development manager, Harry Hustler, said: “It’s always good when customers re-evaluate their working practices and come up with a better way of doing things - and especially when they are go-ahead small businesses such as Lyne Grounds Maintenance. We’ve worked closely with Doug to develop and deliver exactly the truck he needs, and I’m delighted that it’s already fulfilling its promise.”