Wheel Loader 17 t, Weichai 180

What this machine is

A 17-tonne wheel loader with a 180 hp Weichai engine. Overall 7.00 m long, 2.39 m wide and 3.26 m tall, with a machine weight of 17 tonnes. It occupies 55 m³ on the vessel.

Our catalogue prints the engine, the weight and the dimensions and does not print a build year, a bucket size or an hour reading. Those rows are absent from the specification table rather than guessed at. Ask, and we confirm each of them against the machine standing in our yard.

What it is used for

Construction and mining, and in both it is the machine that runs all day.

Stockpile work. Moving sand, aggregate, ore or coal around a yard and feeding it into a plant, a hopper or a truck.

Loading. Filling tippers from a stockpile, which is faster than an excavator doing the same job because the loader drives at the pile rather than swinging to it.

Batching plants and quarries. Charging bins and hoppers, on a short repeated cycle, from first light to last.

Yard duties. Snow, spillage, clearing, pushing up a pile, moving anything that will fit in a bucket. Every operation that owns one finds work for it that was never in the business case.

Why a loader and not an excavator

Buyers sometimes treat these as alternatives at a similar weight. They are not, and the difference is simple enough to state in a sentence.

A loader moves material that is already loose. An excavator makes material loose and reaches below its own level.

That leads to a clean rule. If your material is in a stockpile, a bin or a heap, buy the loader: it is faster, it is on wheels so it moves around a site quickly, and it costs a fraction of an excavator to ship. If you need to dig, trench or reach down into a pit, buy the excavator, because a loader physically cannot.

Where the loader wins outright is on a repeated short cycle. Pile to truck, pile to hopper, all day. It drives at the material, fills, reverses, turns and dumps, and it does that faster than a tracked machine can swing.

Where it loses is on unprepared or soft ground, where tyres slip and tracks do not, and on anything below ground level.

Condition, and what we do before it ships

Through our own workshop before it loads: inspected, put right, and photographed at each stage.

On a wheel loader, four things carry the wear. The tyres, which are a significant cost and are consumed quickly on abrasive material. The transmission and torque converter, which take the load every time the machine drives into a pile. The lift and tilt hydraulics, where leaks and slow operation show the hours. The pins and bushes at the loader arms, where play tells you the truth about the hour meter.

Ask for those four and we will send them, along with the hour reading.

Shipping it

55 m³, calculated from the overall dimensions, and with the Shantui SD16 dozer at 54 m³ it is among the lowest of any earthmoving machine on this site. Against the 22-tonne excavator at 94 m³, a loader lands at your port for a great deal less, which is worth knowing when the two machines are being compared on capability alone.

Loaded at our yard in Tangshan, shipped through Tianjin Port.

What to tell us

Your material and its density, because that decides bucket size. The trucks you will be filling. Whether the ground is prepared. Your destination port and the quantity.