For Buster Pieta, the Sumitomo 3740TLW is a real grin machine. He can’t stop grinning when he’s operating it. And he’s definitely not the only one at Lloyd Logging who is deeply impressed by it… and impressed on a scale rarely seen in this industry.

Lloyd Logging was among the first to take delivery of a new generation 40-series Sumitomo model in New Zealand. Weighing in at 37 tonnes, the 3740 loader is a 250-sized machine with a 300 base and an 11.68 metre reach. One of its stand-out features is fuel economy, as it appears to burn considerably less diesel than similar loaders. 

It was a real treat for operator, Buster to finally step into his first brand new machine and he thinks it’s the best machine he’s ever operated.

“I reckon this machine is a good 40% up in production on the previous machine, and there wasn’t anything really wrong with the last one, I just turned around one day and here is this shiny new machine and a key handed to me,” he says.

For Lloyd Logging owner, Isaac Lloyd, a happy operator is a productive operator, but there is a raft of reasons why both Isaac and Buster are grinning. Not least of which is the fuel efficiency. 

“Our first Sumi when we got it three years ago, it was just what it could do, the power, the smoothness, it was just amazing,” says Isaac. 

“And the biggest thing for me was they just burn very little diesel. The amount of diesel it burns is just crazy and that was back then you know, they were already onto something as far as fuel efficiency goes. 

“Then we got another Sumi, that was a 370 running our processor and the diesel use on that one was amazing too. And being a bigger machine, you would think it would be quite slow, but it was still quick and nimble. So now we have five Sumitomo’s; two loaders and three processors running Woodsman 850’s, which are well matched to the Sumi 370 and 350’s.

“So, the newest Sumi we have is running Ad Blue (necessary for a Tier 4 engine), which is a bit of a bummer but one thing we find very efficient is the 820-litre fuel tank. The Toll fuel tanker just fills it up once a week and that lasts him the whole week easy. Being such a large tank, we do have to drain the water trap quite often because it creates a lot of condensation when fuel gets lower.”

Looking good

The machine is mostly used for fleeting and loading, but Buster does a little bit of shovelling in the cut-over when he gets the chance. 

Isaac adds: “He loves getting to go shovelling, finds it very well balanced, it’s not tippy or anything but we sort of want it to just stay on the skid. He’s got a few scratches on it already and I am quite fussy about that with the machines.”

That’s one of the reasons why Isaac made the decision to have...