A.P. O’Horo Company of Youngstown, OH, recently purchased a Multi-Ripper from Leading Edge Attachments Inc. for its John Deere 270 excavator.

Jerry Bailey, project manager of A.P. O’Horo, who is leading a $7.2-million highway widening and interchange project for the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), said “[The Multi-Ripper] works awesome!

“The solid sandstone mass on either side of the roadway is kind of odd for our region,” continued Bailey. “It’s hard stuff. There are no seams in it. It is not fragmented at all. We can’t blast because we are too close to the road and utilities.”

The only alternative, according to Bailey, would have been to use a hoe-ram. But using a hoe ram would have been only 50 percent as fast as the Multi-Ripper, he said.

“Now we can work a lot faster,” said Bailey. “Not only that, we have eliminated the need to have another machine and operator working, otherwise we would have to break it out with the hoe-ram mounted on one excavator and then clean up with a bucket on another machine.”

With the Multi-Ripper, the company can rip up the sandstone, and with the quick coupler, change back to a bucket for clean up, all with one machine and operator, said Bailey.

“On this project we have been using the Multi-Ripper everyday for the waterline, storm drainage and sanitary installations,” said Bailey. “I only wish that we wouldn’t have waited so long to give it a try.”