Sennebogen--A Look Back to Move On

For George and Bruce Zubick, the arrival of their new Sennebogen 850 M material handler was a welcome step backward for their equipment fleet.

The Zubicks are co-owners and managers of John Zubick Ltd., Scrap Metals, a recycling yard that has operated in London, Ontario, for more than 50 years.

Bruce Zubick has not been entirely pleased with the direction some machine manufacturers have been taking with their new equipment design.

"In order for us to go ahead, we have to go back," Zubick says. "Manufacturers have deemed that to advance their technology, they have to computerize. But on heavy equipment like this, it’s not compatible. We have to go back to simplicity, back to ‘operator friendly’—and Sennebogen offers this."

The Zubick fleet includes several heavy-lift machines, including cranes and material handlers, in addition to a full complement of loaders, trucks, a mobile shear and a baler. The traffic in and out of the yard is a constant stream, so Zubick has little patience for downtime.

"When you buy a new piece of hydraulic equipment, you spend a lot of money on it and you expect it to perform without downtime. We have one piece of equipment, a year old, that has a computer board in it. We had to replace the board twice. Each time, the machine was down for one-and-a-half days to get repaired."

With the volume of material that Zubick handles, downtime for the material handling-equipment means costly back-ups for the trucks in the yard and for customer orders.

"Sennebogen realizes that a machine is designed to start up and go to work," Zubick says. "Putting a high-tech computer on an industrial piece of equipment like this, it just doesn’t match."

The green machine in the Zubick yard is the world’s first Sennebogen 850 M rubber-tired material handler.

According to Zubick, the 850 M model was the best choice for his application because of its higher lift capacity and longer reach. "This unit has the capability to sit behind a 48-foot trailer and reach right to the front to unload it," he says.

The machine’s operator, Gord Grayson, agrees.

Grayson also appreciates the hydraulic Sennebogen cab, which can elevate up to 19 feet to give him a better vantage point on the loads he’s lifting.

"It’s good for looking into the trailer. On a machine I used to run, the old cables would get in front of you, you’d be loading blind and banging the sides of the trucks. The cab is big, too—you don’t get cramped up in it," Grayson says.

Between the Top Lift service and the 850’s simplicity, Zubick feels that he is truly getting what he paid for with the Sennebogen machine. "We want something that an operator can climb up into, turn the key, and you know the key is going directly to the starter. I know organizations that refuse to buy new machines because they are all high tech. The new ‘electronic era’ is not conducive to this kind of environment. It’s dirty and dusty, there’s vibration, hot and cold, condensation—it’s industrial, not an office environment," Zubick says of scrap yards.