Self-loading mixer specifications, row by row: what each one decides on site

Read the discharge row first and treat the other capacity rows as background. Five of the six models published here carry a verified discharge figure, and across those five it runs from 1.0 to 4.5 cubic metres; the SLM-18, the one model complete enough for a specification page of its own, discharges 1.6 to 1.8. Three of the five are stated as bands rather than single values, because that is how the plant states them, and a band is not vagueness — it is the honest width of a figure that moves with the mix and with how full the drum is run. The sixth model, the SLM-35, shows no discharge figure at all: the two technical documents we hold for that machine state it differently and we do not choose between them. Of the sixteen mixer configurations behind this site, fourteen carry a real discharge value, spanning the same 1.0 to 4.5.

Two other rows also get called capacity, and neither answers the same question. The drum's geometric volume is published on three of the six models, at 2,900, 5,500 and 6,500 litres, and it describes the physical size of the vessel rather than what comes out of it. The litre figure inside a model designation is a third thing again, a catalogue convention rather than a measurement: the machine whose plant designation reads 3,200 has a measured 2,900-litre drum and discharges 1.6 to 1.8 cubic metres, and none of those three figures can be derived from the other two. That is why no designation litre figure appears anywhere on this site, and why the model codes here are the discharged cubic metre multiplied by ten — including the SLM-35, whose code was set from the figure its two sheets disagree over, which is why its name carries a number its discharge row does not.

Width is the row that decides whether the machine reaches the pour, and it is published on two of the six models. Ten of the sixteen mixer configurations behind this site carry a full dimension set, and across those ten the width runs from 1.60 to 2.30 metres, the height from 2.45 to 2.90 and the length from 4.35 to 7.06. That spread is the point. A machine 1.60 metres across goes down an old-district lane that stops a 2.30-metre machine dead, and both are described by the same sentence about self-loading mixers being compact. One of those ten sets is measured off a dimensioned drawing and the other nine are not, and that difference is worth raising before it becomes a difference that costs money at a terminal. Ask for the model rather than the category, and ask which drawing the width was measured off, because a dimension is worth what its source is worth.

The posture behind the figure is the second question, and only one machine here answers it. The SLM-18's dimensions come off a general-arrangement drawing that separates a travelling body height of 2.58 metres from a bucket-raised height of 3.45 metres. Every other measured set we hold comes from a commercial document from the plant that gives one set of dimensions and does not say which posture they were taken in. Width is barely affected by posture, so those widths stay usable. Height is affected, and on a machine whose drum lifts the two postures stand hundreds of millimetres apart, so none of those heights is presented here as a travelling height. Where such a height sits well clear of the door opening the ambiguity changes nothing; where it sits within a few centimetres of it, the ambiguity decides the verdict, and we will not settle it by assumption. The full door-frame test is set out in the container guide.

Five of the six published models carry a rated power and one does not; across those five the figures run from 78 to 91 kW, and of the sixteen mixer configurations behind this site, seven carry a rated power, from 55 to 91 kW. The engine designation is thinner. It is published on two machines only, and the one this page attaches to a model number is the SLM-18's YCD4T22T-105; the second is published with no maker beside it, because the document that gives the designation does not name one. Five of the six models do name an engine maker, Yuchai in every case, and on the four that name a maker without a designation the English and Chinese sheets write the designation differently. We cannot tell whether that is one engine written twice or a dropped character, so the row renders as nothing rather than as a guess.

A transmission type is published on all six models and a maximum travel speed on four, the fastest of those four reaching 36 km/h and the slowest 23. That row matters more than it looks on a sheet, because it decides whether the machine takes itself to the next pour or waits for a low-loader. An axle type is published on all six as well, and it separates the small machines from the large ones more honestly than a model code does: the six rows run from a heavy-duty manganese-steel axle, through wheel-side reduction axles rated at 10 tonnes, to a 12-tonne hydraulic wheel-side drive axle. Three of the six also publish a brake description — a butterfly service brake, an emergency brake acting on all four wheels and a separate double parking brake — and four publish a hydraulic system capacity. Those are rows a maintenance manager reads and a buyer skips, and the first a parts order needs.

The chassis rows are where a specification sheet stops being a table and starts describing a job. Articulated steering is a verified row on three of the six published models, four-wheel drive on four, and on two of the six a recovered plant sheet gives a rear axle that swings through 28 degrees, which is what keeps the other wheels loaded when one drops into a rut. Together those rows say the machine reaches the pour over unmade ground on a chassis that articulates rather than one that pivots on its front wheels. One model in the range is the exception worth reading closely: its published configuration list states a rigid one-piece chassis with front-wheel steering, while its steering specification row is blank, because the two technical documents we hold for it disagree on that exact point.

Tyres are published on all six models and they are not one size. The six rows include a 20.5-16, a 12R-22.5 steel-belted tubeless radial and a 1670-20, and size does not track engine power: two machines with the same published power carry different tyres, which is worth knowing before a spare is ordered against a power figure. The configuration rows are more specific again. All six machines load themselves through a bucket. Five lift and rotate the drum through 270 degrees, four state a drum speed of 16 revolutions per minute, five carry an automatic water-fill controller with an external suction pump and the sixth a large self-priming water tank, and five carry a reversing and drum-monitoring camera. Electronic hydraulic weighing is standard on one model, optional on four and not listed at all on the sixth.

So a single machine loads itself, mixes, travels and discharges, and it batches as well on the one model that carries the weighing system as standard and the four that offer it. What this page will not do is turn that into a number of men or a volume per day. The hourly-output column on all six of our model sheets is empty, and no plant has supplied a cycle time, a batches-per-hour figure or a fuel consumption at all, for any model in the range. That is a harder statement than a missing column: the question exists on our own sheet and no one has answered it in writing. The arithmetic against your own crew, your mix and your haul distance is yours to do. What we can put in writing is the configuration that a quotation is written against, so that whatever you calculate is calculated against the machine you are actually buying.

Two of the six models publish an operating weight and four do not, for two different reasons. The SLM-18 is 5,800 kg, and the second published weight is 8,500 kg. On two of the four blanks the row is blocked by a registered conflict: one sheet prints the same figure in the kerb-weight and the maximum-load columns, which reads like a column shift, and on the other machine two documents differ by 200 kg. On the remaining two the record says only that no usable weight has reached us, and it does not distinguish a figure nobody sent from two figures that disagree. Of the sixteen mixer configurations behind this site, three carry a weight at all. That gap is what the plants have and have not put on paper, and the missing weights are on the list of questions that go back to them before a model is quoted.

The row matters twice in a booking. A 40 ft high cube is limited to 26.5 tonnes of payload, so any multi-unit loading figure is geometry until a weight confirms it, and the yard at the destination plans its lift and its inland trailer against the same number. Neither of those is a question you want opened on the day the box is stuffed or the day it is discharged. Where the weight is missing we say so and ask the plant for it in writing, rather than reconstructing it from a machine of a similar size — a reconstructed weight looks exactly like a measured one on a packing list, and it is the crane driver who finds out it was not. Both questions go back to the plant together, because a drawing without a weight only half-answers a booking.

Two rows are blank on every mixer we hold, and neither is an oversight. The first is the drum-lowered transport height. It is not a synonym for the travelling height: travelling height is the drum in its normal carried position; the transport figure is the drum dropped as far as it goes, which on a drum that rotates through 270 degrees can sit meaningfully lower. It is also the one figure that could take the SLM-18 off a flat rack, if the lowered drum comes in under the 2.535-metre usable door height that its travelling height misses by 45 millimetres — which makes it the single most valuable missing number on this site. The second is the emission stage. No document we hold for a mixer states one, in any of the usual notations, and our standing rule is that without a written answer we write neither that a machine meets a destination's emission requirement nor that none applies.

Three further rows exist on exactly one machine each, and it is the same machine each time: the SLM-18, with a wheelbase of 2,330 millimetres, a track width of 1,600 millimetres and a bucket-raised height of 3.45 metres. They are published because that machine was measured off a dimensioned drawing and the others were not, which is also why the bucket-raised figure matters — it is the height under a doorway, a canopy or an overhead line at the moment the bucket goes up, and it stands 0.87 metres above the same machine's travelling height. If you need a wheelbase for a ramp calculation on any other model, we do not have it and will not scale it off a photograph. No turning radius is recorded for any mixer either. That figure exists in our data only on the crawler dozers, which run on tracks, so we will not quote one for this range.

A model gets its own specification page here only when six rows are present: discharge, drum volume, engine brand and model, rated power, overall dimensions and operating weight. Sixteen mixer configurations sit behind this site and exactly one clears all six — the SLM-18, at six of six, which is why it is the only machine with a full specification page. The other five published models appear on the range page and are quoted from a written specification sheet instead. That is a product decision rather than a presentation one: a page whose engine, dimension and weight rows are all empty tells a buyer we do not know what we are selling, which is worse than no page. It is also why figures on this page are attached to a model number only where the model number has earned one.

Where two documents disagree, the row renders as nothing and nobody here picks the winner, because picking produces a figure that looks identical to a verified one and cannot be audited afterwards. It is worth noticing which rows are complete. Across all twenty-one machine records behind this site, mixers and crawler dozers together, the only rows a reader will see filled on every single one are the two we generate ourselves: the HS heading that goes on the documents, which your broker still confirms before the proforma, and the shipping mode. Every row that has to arrive from a plant in writing is partial. That is the true shape of the file, and it is why a fully populated table covering a whole range is worth one question: which of these numbers was measured on this model, and which was carried across from the machine next to it.