Hot take: Running your cutterhead at max RPM all day is a waste of diesel

I tried throttling back 15% on a 6-inch clay job near Baton Rouge and the production barely dipped but I saved almost 30 gallons of fuel over 8 hours, anyone else ever test this?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_john11d ago

Nah, I gotta push back on this one a little. I've run plenty of jobs in clay from Texas to Louisiana and throttling down on a cutterhead can actually get you into trouble if you hit a sudden change in material. The fuel savings sound nice on paper but when you're buried in gumbo and the cutter stalls out because you're not spinning fast enough to break it up, you lose way more than 30 gallons trying to get unstuck and back to production. I think there's a sweet spot for sure, but max RPM isn't always just burning diesel for no reason.

sandra_moore3011d ago

Had a buddy try that low rpm trick down in east Texas on a wet clay job... cutterhead bogged down so bad they had to dig it out by hand with a shovel. Took him the whole afternoon to get back to running, and the fuel he saved didn't cover half the lost time. @the_john knows what's up with that gumbo... you gotta keep the spin up to break through when it hits you.

waderamirez11d ago

That's a good point @the_john, the real risk isn't the fuel savings, it's the sudden clay pocket that grabs you because you don't have the inertia to power through it.