Fleet of giants
The Belgian-based demolition company is well known in international circles, and over the years its machine fleet has included a couple of bespoke Hitachi ZX870 telescopic creations from Kocurek; a 44.0m 110-tonner and a 48.0m 145-tonne version.
Also, how many demolition companies can you think of with a couple of standard Komatsu PC1250s on the books? As well as spending stints pulling the levers on these and more extreme machines, experienced operator Peter also piloted a 40.0m (rigid) Cat 385 for 14 months.
His previous mount was a five-year stint on the 48.0m Hitachi ZX870 tele-boom, which went on to notch up over 7,000 hours of high-reach work, before being sold to a North American demolition contractor.
The controls on the KMC 1200S are all electric and took a while to set up correctly, and Peter misses being able to quickly alter the working height while standing in the same position with the telescopic boom. “I need more space with the 51.0m pinned section fixed boom, but it is much stronger. There is no going back.”
Triple Boom
It wasn’t needed at the Belgian hospital job. With the top floors removed, it was over to main contractor Aclagro’s Volvo EC750 to take down the rest of the structure.
The 51.0m high-reach arm was packed up and trucked back to Martens Democom’s base in Genk, but the excavator travelled north and crossed the border into the Netherlands where it was joined by its longest TAB or triple boom.
Used at the first and second jobs, we had to wait until the following week to see it in action at the excavator’s fourth job; Dutch power plant number three for Martens Democom in the town of Bergen-op-Zoom.
Up until a couple of years ago, the Belgian company’s demolition fleet included an extreme TAB version of the Hitachi EX1200, which by the time Kocurek had finished with it tipped the scales at around 220 tonnes.
