Major trimming hedges and fuel costs

You could say that when it comes to hedge-cutting, Michael Tomlinson is a bit of a perfectionist. 

He’s been doing it since 1982 and serves a wide range of agricultural and rural clients in Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Warwickshire. 

Michael contracts annual hedge maintenance programmes for local golf courses, parish churches and manufacturing facilities, to name but a few.

Michael Tomlinson © Major Equipment

“We generally start the hedge-trimming process from July, right through to the following March,” commented Michael, “and we work on all kinds of hedging styles and types so we need the right equipment to maintain our level of finish and provide the ultimate customer satisfaction.

“I take a lot of pride in my work and I want my customers to love what I do so they come back to me year after year.”

In the past, Michael had been using flail hedge cutting units to deal with typical hawthorn hedging on farms and evergreens in the rural suburbs. 

Using a flail mower on these hedge types often incurs issues with quality of finish and result in a lot of often large leftover clippings.

“Using a flail hedge-cutter head on typical thorn hedges is fine,” said Michael, “but on many of the evergreen hedges, we find it is not good.

“We found that the draft coming from the flails rotating would cause the tips of the hedges to blow away from the blades and it was often difficult to maintain a straight, neat cut.

Also, it would leave large clumps of un-mulched clippings that would collect and leave an unsightly mess.  So, we had to do something about improving our service because it needs to be a professional finish, every time.”

Two years ago, Michael heard that a hedge cutter unit was being launched by Major Equipment, a company well known for manufacturing high-end mowers capable of handling the roughest and toughest of work environments.

© Major Equipment

“Ed from farm machinery dealer, G Richardson Agri Ltd., in Cheshire, arranged for a demo unit and they let me try it out on my Shelbourne Reynolds HD 865 VFRT,” said Michael.

“It was just a matter of removing the flail head and re-attaching the Major rotary head. What I immediately found was that it required much less oil flow to the head drive and therefore much less engine power, and would likely reduce my fuel costs.”

Major’s 1.43m Hedge-cutter head, fits directly to most hedge cutter arms on the market without modifications. It has a total head width of 1.6m and a cutting width of 1.43m.

It only requires around 36hp to drive and an oil flow of just 80 litres per minute at a maximum of 170 bar pressure. The Major Hedge Cutter comes fully galvanised for long life protection against corrosion.

© Major Equipment

“Once we started using this new Major Hedge-cutting head,” enthused Michael, “ we calculated that compared with our flail heads, we were saving around £100 per week on fuel costs alone, purely because it was so much easier to drive.

“It mulched the evergreen clippings about the same as a flail head, but taking into consideration the fuel savings alone, on an annual basis, we are saving as much money that would buy the equivalent of another Major hedge-cutter head for free, and that’s impressive!

For more information, call Major Equipment on 094 9630572 or visit www.major-equipment.com.