Keeping a Low Profile

Super streamlined portable operations are somewhat stealthy, moving from site to site almost under the radar. Yet the mission is getting maximum mobility and high capacity production from every component – from the plant through an arsenal of support equipment. Concrete Materials, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based construction materials supplier, knows the drill. If they roll in with the best portable package, additional market share is in the bag. The company’s market areas range across the Midwest, from their home state and beyond into Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota. They supply a wide variety of projects, from multi-million dollar DOT work to weekend home improvements, each requiring a different competitively priced transportation solution. Recently, this producer acquired one of the latest offerings in truck unloading systems, an extremely portable, low profile unloader that’s ideal for their high profile projects.

Recently, Concrete Materials began its biggest job of the season – processing, delivering and stockpiling five different aggregate products for its customer, Brower Construction Company, who will be placing a portable asphalt plant near Ashton, Iowa. Brower is the prime-paving contractor for Iowa’s Highway 60 project. A four-lane highway is being erected on an integral eighty-mile stretch from Sioux City, Iowa to Worthington, Minn. One of the unique challenges Brower faces on the job is laying asphalt eleven inches in depth.

To maintain production right from the start, Brower’s portable asphalt plant will require more than 170,000 tons of quartzite aggregate, one of the highest quality materials mined in the region. Concrete Materials is filling the order via the delivery of an approximate 6,000-truckloads of material. “We figured we’d have to unload a truck every four minutes, and that’s what we’ve been doing,” says Clark Meyer, aggregate sales and transportation manager for Concrete Materials. With that sort of demanding delivery schedule, and because they’re building a variety of product stockpiles, Meyer discovered the need for a truck unloading system that they could quickly move from stockpile A, to B, to C, and so on. They invested in the road-portable RazerTail Truck Unloader manufactured by Superior Industries, a conveyor systems manufacturer located in Morris, Minnesota.

“We had some traditional truck unloaders in mind for the job, but we soon found that they wouldn’t work. They’re not low profile. It takes nearly a ten-hour day, and more than 1,000 cubic yards of material to build the earth ramp, because the unit is 6-feet in the air. That’s a $2,000 price tag for each move. Since we need to move every week or so, we decided that a traditional truck unloader is unacceptable,” says Meyer. As the Superior Industries RazerTail Truck Unloader requires only a 22-inch earth ramp, Meyer says that they have a far safer operation, and that they can easily move the new low profile unit from one stockpile to another, and be up and running again in under two hours.

“We also needed a way to unload both belly dump and end dump trucks, and this system will accommodate that,” says Meyer who, like other producers, finds that hauling aggregates in belly dumps is more cost-effective than using end dump trucks. However, in the absence of an unloading system, such as a drive-over, DOT officials typically discourage the use of belly dumps if material has to be dumped on the ground and rehandled. Meyer is pleased that the Superior RazerTail Truck Unloader solves that problem as well. He can eliminate the potential of material contamination while giving his haulers the flexibility to unload onto conveyors.