Trading it all in for an Arocs

Cutting down wood and waste.

Raddery Sawmill, based near Inverness, Scotland first opened for business in 1997. What started out as a small interest for Alasdair Anderson soon grew in to a full time job for him and his wife Angela. He had previously worked for the Forestry Commission and whilst taking time off, focused his attention on the mill.

Today it offers an array of materials including fencing, posts, beams, boards, decking and cladding as well as a biomass service.

“We’d been running the sawmill business for five years and realised we were struggling to dispose of the off cuttings and waste. It was then that we decided to explore biomass as we wanted to turn the waste in to something useful.”

The waste material is air-dried for a year to ensure the right moisture content and is then chipped for fuel burning. The process provides chips which are cost-effective and of the finest quality and is a step to a more sustainable future.

- Alasdair Anderson, Owner, Raddery Sawmill

Investing in the business.

Over the years, the company has relied on a variety of tractor models to transport wood and equipment.

The vehicles have also used Heizohack chippers to chop up the wood; the clever machines are designed to produce a consistent chip size required for burning in woodchip boilers, “We bought our first Heizohack chipper in 2004 and it just grew from there. Every time we paid off a machine we bought a new, bigger one. We used to feed the wood by hand but couldn’t keep up with demand so moved on to a crane-fed chipper,” explained Alasdair.   

It was also around this time that the company started to take on contractor business. Alasdair and Angela invested £1.2 million in a renovation of the sawmill and continued to upgrade their tractors and equipment.

Right machine for the job.

It was only recently that the couple decided to review their modes of transportation. “We realised that when we were on the tractors, we were spending more time travelling from job to job than doing the actual chipping,” said Alasdair.

They needed a powerful change to keep up with the growing demand, “Once we came across the Arocs, we knew it was the right machine for us as it could offer better speed and safety; so we traded all our machines in for it.”

Something the couple hasn’t regretted, as Alasdair describes, “Myself and my cousin drive it and we’ve found it just brilliant, it’s great on fuel economy and has all-round visibility too. I love the layout of the cab and the radio – all the controls are really easy to use.”

Simply brilliant.

The six-wheel drive was the feature which originally attracted Alasdair to the model, “It was difficult to access some areas of customers’ land when we had the tractor pulling the chipper, especially when we were trying to chip trees around the edges of fields. The Arocs offers fantastic off-roading capabilities and ground clearance – essential when conducting forestry work in hard to reach areas.”

Have you driven a specially modified truck like this one?

Does it offer the same speed and power as Alasdair’s Arocs? Tell us about it and share some photos either below or by private message.