Baling ASAP

Mobile and portable balers are assuming a greater share of the workload at demolition sites and other scrap generation points.

Balers come in several different configurations and sizes, but in most cases they are considered stationary processing equipment.

But balers on wheels that move from town-to-town and travel freely across state lines have begun to increase their presence in the market, especially in the scrap metals industry. In some cases, these balers and their operators may even be “hired guns,” brought in to clean up and process scrap metal generated at demolition sites.

Scrap processing companies are also using the machines to process materials at satellite or feeder yards, saving the time and cost of moving some grades of metal to a central processing location.

HEADING DOWN THE HIGHWAY

Sierra International Machinery Inc., Bakersfield, Calif., introduced the Idromec 500 Self Loader to the North American market in March of 2000. According to Sierra general sales manager Jose L. Pereyra, the response to the portable shear-baler-logger has been positive, with 15 units sold this year to scrap processors and demolition contractors.

The Sierra 500 is among the machines on the market that can process a variety of metal grades and commodities on site—or at several different sites in the same week. The machine has four hydraulic legs that make it easily transportable from location to location.

Adding to the versatility of portable shear-baler-loggers is their ability to handle different commodities in different ways, notes Pereyra. “You can prepare the light stuff and bale it, and the I-beams and structural you can shear with the same machine.”

The 500 is portable not only because of its hydraulic legs set up, Pereyra adds, but also due to its legal towing width.

“Even on a small job, using this equipment can make sense, because you save on freight,” notes Pereyra. “This way you process right on site and ship from where you are rather than from a third location.”

DEMOLISH AND SHIP

Demolition contractors have been baling on site for years, but the advent of units with greater portability seems to be increasing the frequency of the practice.

Allied Erecting & Dismantling, Youngstown, Ohio, has been in the business of dismantling industrial facilities that contain large volumes of metal for more than two-and-a-half decades. According to manager of projects and administration Mark Ramun, the company often brings balers onto the site, and has even designed and built its own baler engineered to handle the variety of materials the company encounters at its job sites.

The amount of time a baler stays on a job site depends on several factors, according to Ramun. On many industrial demolition jobs, sheet metal used as building siding can be a high-volume material requiring baling. “Some people stockpile the material until the end of the project, and just need the baler for a few days,” remarks Ramun, “but on other projects, the contractors don’t have the luxury of reserving space for a stockpile, so they need the baler on site for the entire length of the project.”

B&B Wrecking, Cleveland, started up a portable baling subsidiary called Scrap Processors in January of 2000. The company owns one Sierra and one Harris portable shear-baler-logger that are used at B&B demolition sites and also leased to other demolition companies.

According to B&B vice president of operations Brian Baumann, “if you have a job with about 500 tons or more of steel in the building structure, than it makes sense to bring a shear-baler on site.”

Baumann says having a combination shear-baler can be the key to bringing a piece of equipment on site and making it worthwhile.

“Normally, for a 500-ton job, maybe 150 tons can be baled, but the rest is heavy steel that has to be sheared,” he remarks. Typically, a building’s decking and siding can be baled, while beams and bar joists must be sheared. Baumann adds that such machines are “suitable for sheet metal, duct work, miscellaneous piping.”

Wire and cable can be another material that is baled on site at demolition projects, although Ramun notes that other processing steps to remove insulation from the wire can also be involved.

The baler designed by Allied can be transported via tractor-trailer or on a rail car, according to Ramun. “The operator runs a front end loader and also operates the baler via remote control from the cab of the loader.”

There are several reasons why baling on-site can be beneficial to demolition contractors, says Ramun. “Baled materials yield a higher price in most cases, so at some point that thinner material like sheet metal needs to be compacted,” he notes. “So either you do it yourself on-site or you ship it off-site unprepared.”

But shipping it as loose scrap can result in higher transportation costs. “One of the problems with not baling is that transportation costs get out of hand,” says Ramun. “Shipping something like unprepared siding can add up. It’s a call the contractor has to make, based on how far the material has to be shipped and how much material there is,” he adds, before concluding that, “on a larger scale project, it often makes sense to have a baler onsite,” he adds.

Baumann agrees, stating that in addition to upgrading some materials, “the biggest advantage is in the transportation. With compressed materials, you can ship 20 tons versus four or five tons of loose material. If you figure you’re paying a driver and fuel costs adding up to $65 per hour, then the savings in making one trip for every four or five you would make for loose material is pretty clear.”

MORE SHIPPING SAVINGS

Demolition contractors are not the only ones looking to save on shipping costs. Scrap processors are also using portable baling, logging and car crushing equipment to cut down on the number of sites visited by scrap between the time it is acquired and the time it reaches the consuming mill.

In a traditional scrap company set up, feeder or satellite yards often act as retail receptacles for material, or weigh stations for scrap on its way to a central processing facility.

But the availability of portable shear-baler-loggers has allowed some operators to turn the traditional set up completely around, sometimes bringing the processing capabilities to the collected scrap, rather than the other way around.

Sierra’s Pereyra has sold portable models to scrap companies “that have two, three or four smaller satellite yards in the same region, and they rotate the machine’s time between the yards.”

Howard Lincoln of Lincoln Iron & Metal, Erie, Pa., started National Recycling 14 years ago as a way to provide temporary, on-site metals baling services to scrap generators, processors and consumers.

National Recycling sends out Al-jon 400 balers with an operator and charges customers by the hour (plus fuel costs) to bale loose ferrous and nonferrous metals.

Customers range from processors whose own baler has broken down or is being rebuilt to manufacturers such as National Can, who needed to bale and ship out an obsolete inventory of cans for a customer who requested a new can style. “We’ll do anything people want us to do,” says Lincoln.

“I've got balers out in five different states right now,” notes Lincoln, who adds that the service seems to have caught on with customers, 95% of whom contact him for repeat business.

Portable balers may be used by both owners and rental customers to prepare materials for the mill, or they may prepare ferrous grades for a centrally located shredding plant. Jim Langland of recycling equipment maker Al-jon Inc., Ottumwa, Iowa, notes that “There are quite a few ferrous bales and logs going to shredders.”

Many operators of high-volume auto shredders looking to maximize their production have tested their results using different forms of shredder feedstock. “If you’re operating a shredder, your production rates actually go up if you’re processing soft shredder logs or crushed cars,” says Langland.

Langland defines the soft shredder logs as consisting of “general ferrous scrap—that could be white goods or demolition scrap—just general obsolete scrap that has arrived in the yard.”

According to Langland, the logs are popular with shredder operators because they are easy to handle and place on the infeed conveyor, and because they provide a steady stream of shredded output to pass through the downstream system sorting machinery.

Langland adds, though, that shredder operators have indicated to him that “the number one feedstock, as far as throughput, is a crushed car, because the width is almost the same as the width of the rotors.”

Whether being used at a large scrap yard, a feeder yard or at a demolition site, Ed List of Moros North America, Louisville, Ky., notes that metals balers are accomplishing the same essential tasks for their operators. “What we’re bringing to the market is a material handling solution,” says List. “The right piece of equipment tends to solve that material handling problem.” RT

August 2000
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