Slurry Contractor’s Got It Covered!

With a home base in Cardigan, Mid-Wales, Stepside Agri, the Farmers Weekly Contractor of the Year for 2006, has certainly lived up to its reputation of being a first class, general agricultural contractor. The company provides virtually every service to their customers within 20 miles radius in one of the most productive dairy regions of British farming. The business was established by Gareth James in 19xx and he has since been joined by his sons Daniel and Edward.

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Stepside Agri is probably most famous for it's handling of slurry waste from the dairy industry, applying typically an average 15,000,000 (15 million) gallons every year for their local customers. Obviously there is a lot of road work involved and it's important that ground compaction and over application is avoided at all costs. But typically, the time of year when most slurry needs disposing of, is usually the time of year when the ground conditions are at their worst.

"We cover about a twenty mile radius of Cardigan, said Daniel James, "and although slurry used to be a nasty word back a couple of decades ago, it's now become a very valuable commodity. A controlled returning of waste to the land has proven to be a significant contributor to profitability for our customers."

Typically Stepside uses slurry tankers with a splash plate (9m-12m spread) through the months of October thru January. But mainly employ an umbilical system from January thru September. "we can often spread up to 2500 gallons of slurry per acre, commented Daniel, "and often use special holding tanks that can take up to 12000 gallons, from where we can pump through an umbilical system for up to two miles distance."

One of the biggest challenges in slurry application is through soil compaction and structure damage. So to avoid much of this problem occurring. Stepside uses Major 2600 gallon tankers on 800 tyres, which gives excellent floatation. With much of their delivery requirements from farm to field being as much as six to ten miles, the tanker also has to run smoothly behind the tractor.

"we've had a number of different makes of tanker before but now we found the Major, which we bought from Tallis Amos Group in Narberth, and they have been excellent in their after-sales service. We run twelve John Deere tractors because they are far more reliable and we cannot afford to let down our customers. Because the Major has a special rubber buffer suspension on the drawbar, we don't get the bouncing ride anymore. It's much more comfortable for the operator. The single axle is one of the heaviest duty commercial axles you can find, it's made by Granning and comes complete with hydraulic and pneumatic brakes, so is very safe on the road."

Stepside chose their Major with a 13500 Mec Pump which has a tremendous amount of suction and generally tankers are prone to sucking sand and stones which if left, tend to limit payloads to the fields. But the Major is designed such that debris is pushed straight to the sump and doesn't build up like other tankers and therefore need less cleaning and downtime.

"The Major has a heavy-duty 6mm steel tank and it's slung within the chassis and has two internal baffles to aid stability and strength. The chassis is independent from the tank and can flex without causing damage to the tank barrel. It's also got a large access door at the back and we specified a frontal access panel so we can check regularly for stones and debris, said Daniel. "The good thing about Major is that we can specify what we want and they will build it for us. We've been so happy with everything about the Major tanker and the way that TAG look after us that we now have five Major 2600 Tankers and they are the only ones we operate because they are far superior than anything else on the market. We've put them through a lot of high capacity workloads and we don't get any problems, and as we are reliant on their durability it helps us to maintain a high class service for our customers.