Pitman Contracting gears up for land levelling and drainage

Pitman Contracting, principal, Damien Pitman said he has seen an increase in demand for land levelling, drainage improvements and new foundations, which encouraged him to invest in new equipment and technology to service farmers in north western Victoria.

"My recent purchase has been a large 4.5 metre working width O'B Carry-Grade scraper that is manufactured in Swan Hill by Colin O'Bryan of Murray Valley Lasers," he said. 

"The O'B Carry-Grade Scraper is a unique earthmoving machine that is drawn behind a new 600hp New Holland T615 tractor that I purchased as it also offers increased flexibility of the roles it can perform." 

Mr Pitman said as the scraper was fitted with a row of hydraulic breakout rear rippers without shear pins, allowing the machine to rip, break up, excavate, pick up and carry up to sixteen cubic metres of soil at a time.

"I've been delighted with the performance of the O'Bryan scraper on current on-farm projects locally," he said. 

"The new tractor, a 600 New Holland T615 four wheel drive and the O'B scraper combination is easy to drive and very reliable as it gives a one pass machine that excavates, loads and dumps wherever we want it.

"In fact, I have also placed an order with Colin O'Bryan for him to build me a second O'B Carry-Grade machine which I will have ready for work in the first weeks of next year for general earthmoving and especially for-farm excavation, land levelling, drainage improvement and foundation construction projects.

"I am aware that professional farmers in the district that I service from my home base in Ballarat are seeking to develop their properties to achieve the highest efficiency and increases in productivity that can be obtained from a sensible on-property investment.

"We are seeing high quality farm land rising strongly in market value so most progressive farmers can see their results by investing in further enhancing their home property".

Murray Valley Lasers, principle, Colin O'Bryan said he has built over 300 of his Carry Grade machines at his Swan Hill factory.

"We now have O'B Carry-Grade machines at work in every state of Australia plus we have exported a couple," he said. 

"We pride ourselves on the quality of our design and manufacture and we use best available material such as the ground cutting edges and hydraulics and we have a lot of experience to make best use of the latest GPS movement, grade and machine control systems, so we can provide a complete package that can be at work as soon as it is on site.

"Our users include land levelling, farm drainage and earthmoving contractors while recently individual farmers are now buying their own machines to achieve objectives they hold to increase their own farm productivity"