Bitu-Mill adds to Trout River trailer fleet

A part of BildGroup, Bitu-Mill is no stranger to the benefits of Trout River trailers, the road profiling company purchasing its first model back in 2018. And now it has expanded its Trout River line-up yet again, with four new live-bottom trailers signing on recently to bring the total number of Trout River products to 16.

Bitu-Mill has a Trout River trailer to help carry out its road maintenance operations in every state in which the firm operates, namely Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, where the company partners with councils and government departments to carry out upgrades and work on some of the nation’s biggest road infrastructure projects.

Bitu-Mill’s Victorian Profiling State Manager, Brendan Dixon, says the latest four tri-axle trailers are already hard at work.

“We’re very impressed with them so far,” he says. “They perform quite well. We don’t have any issues with breakdowns halfway through operation or where we need to replace the belts at the drop of a hat, or anything like that. They’ve been really reliable.”

The trailers are used to haul asphalt to various road projects, while also carting away material that’s been profiled up.

“The material goes in through the machine, up a big conveyor belt and then gets spat out the back,” Brendan says. “Then, the material gets taken away for recycling. We reuse the material that comes off the roads 95 per cent of the time.”

The accessibility of Trout River’s products has been a major drawcard for the brand, says Brendan.

“They had a good name in the industry at the time,” he says. “We had a bit of a look around and found that they were user-friendly for our drivers. They weren’t overly complicated on how to use them or anything like that. They were pretty good with access to different parts of daily maintenance. It just made sense for us to get something that wasn’t overly complicated, had a good reputation, easy to use, and it’s worked really well so far.”

Safety was another big plus, says Bitu-Mill Fleet Manager, Karyna Borg.

“What we’ve tried to do within our businesses is eliminate body tipping,” she says. “The hoists aren’t going up now like they’ve predominantly done, now it’s just all flat. So, there’s no risk of the truck tipping over, there’s no risk of striking live powerlines above your head or anything like that. There’s a lot of positives with eliminating risks on job sites with these trailers.”

Meanwhile, the simple, robust and reliable nature of these trailers is delivering operational benefits, she says.

“The guys like them because they’re pretty easy to operate,” she says. “We don’t have to give a day training course on how to operate them. Generally, it’s just an hour or so and they get the hang of it, and we don’t have to worry about tipping on uneven ground. That saved us a lot of time in that area.”

Brendan says the dependability of the Trout River product is standing up well.

“They’re very reliable trailers,” he says. “The last thing I need is a truck full of asphalt, they go to get it out onsite, and the trailer doesn’t work. It’s big money when you’re talking a full load of asphalt, and then it sets in the trailer and it’s all sorts of dramas. We’ve never had that problem with this product, so reliability is a really big one for my part of the business.”

And behind the Trout River brand lies major back-up in the form of the brand’s national distributor, MaxiTRANS – a fact Karyna knows only too well.

“For me, in my department and with what I do, communication is a big thing,” she says. “We deal with MaxiTRANS in Victoria and they’ve been outstanding when it comes to communication.”