Hillhouse Quarry Group operates a large Cat fleet, with both new and rebuilt machines including wheeled loaders, excavators, and off-highway trucks.

It has a longstanding relationship with Caterpillar’s UK dealer, Finning, spanning more than 25 years. 

Recently Hillhouse has purchased two of the latest Cat 772G trucks (pictured above) together with a 95-tonne Cat 395 excavator to accelerate cycle times from quarry face to crusher.

Finning account manager John Stuart says: “Hillhouse wanted to make their quarry operations more productive. They already have a proactive fleet management program, so when their existing Cat 390 excavator was due for replacement, we took the opportunity to look at the fleet.

“In doing so we were able to recommend replacing their larger Cat 775 Cat dump truck for two smaller Cat 772G’s enabling them to increase the speed of unloading and mean they could manoeuvre more easily around the site and easing congestion at the crusher. This increase in efficiency also meant they were burning less fuel so making financial and environmental savings at the same time.”

Due to the nature of the rock quarry at Troon, the excavator needed to have a severe duty bucket attachment and screen guard, while the trucks were fitted with a heavy-duty spec including steel liners.

Hillhouse Group operations director Alistair McGowan says: He added: “We have older machines on site which have been here for years, as we’ve always had Cat machines because of their reliability, efficiency, and technology… Downtime is a huge issue for us being such a large operation, so the reliability of the machines and the service the Finning engineers offer really comes into play because it is business critical.

“These latest machines have advanced a lot from the ones we had so they’ll be a big change for our operators, but our Cat machines are prime movers in our quarry and key to our production.”