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Spring 2010

Marine Construction Company Saves Time with Bobcat Telescopic

V417 VersaHandler telescopic tool carrier moves materials quickly and easily

V417 VersaHandler

The company's V417 telescopic tool carrier easily lifts and carries pilings with a Bobcat grapple attachment. There are 25 approved attachments for the V417.

As a leading marine construction firm in New England, Riverside and Pickering Marine Contractors works hard to meet customer demands while keeping a watchful eye on the fast-changing weather along the Atlantic Ocean.

"Anything we can do to be more efficient and to deal with Mother Nature — which is both our enemy and our friend — is beneficial," says Ken Anderson, who owns the Eliot, Maine, firm with his brother, Doug. "And that's why our VersaHandler® V417 telescopic tool carrier is so valuable. In just one phase of our business, it has cut our time in half. Believe me, that's significant."

The company does commercial and residential marine construction for waterfront communities in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Specialties include piers, docks, floats, wharves, pile driving, landscape construction and design, seawalls, dock repairs and dock rebuilds.

While the Andersons continue to find more applications for the VersaHandler V417, the major use — and the real time-saver — is handling the pilings needed in building docks.

"Our skid-steer loader, a very versatile machine, was having difficulty picking up more than one of the pilings at a time," Ken says. "It was a slow process to move a dozen or more pilings around in order to find the one we needed."

After reading about the Bobcat line of telescopics in WorkSaver® magazine, he contacted Bobcat of New Hampshire.

"We selected the V417 because of its compact size and good lift capacity," Ken says. "Using a Bobcat grapple, we can move two to four pilings at a time. We can telescope the grapple out 17 feet to the back of the pile to pick up the piling we want. Loading a barge to head out is completed in half the time it previously took."

The V417 is used in both the yard and at jobsites. "Most of our waterside work is done with cranes and barges," Doug says. "On a recent job, however, the water was too shallow to use our barge so we could not bring in the crane to set the pilings. We put the auger attachment on the V417, drove across the customer's property to auger in the pilings. We were able to telescope over the water to do the work. That was much easier than doing it by hand."

The family-owned business takes pride in its workmanship, quality products, affordability and service — and in always having an Anderson on the job. Based on its ability and versatility, customers are likely to be seeing more of the Bobcat V417 as well.

Visit the VersaHandler TTC page to find out more information about the Bobcat line of telescopics and attachments.

Multiple steering modes

The three-steering-mode feature is also important to the Andersons. "All-wheel steer enables us to move materials around our yard without tearing up the pavement," Ken says. The machine can also be driven in front-wheel steer for road travel and crab steer for side-to-side positioning.

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