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Portable replacement
February 1, 2007 By: Rodney E. Garrett Pit & QuarryAn Eagle Crusher portable plant helps a Missouri quarry meet high product demand with little additional overhead.
Portable crushing and screening plants are increasingly becoming a viable part of the rock quarry production equation, and with good reason. They carry with them a relatively modest capital investment for the owner, when compared to purchasing a stationary plant with a corresponding production output.
Depending on how a portable plant is configured and its crusher type, it can be quite versatile — efficiently crushing and screening quarried rock and recycling asphalt pavement and concrete.
There are a host of applications as to how a portable crushing-screening plant can fit into a quarry operation. Some are more unusual than others, such as the application found at Willard Quarries Inc., Lebanon, Mo. The company is privately owned and operated by the Willard family, with David Willard at its helm.
 Chris Russell, left, aggregates equipment specialist for The G.W. Van Keppel Co., with Jim Drew, plant manager for Willard Quarries Inc. |
For years, the company has alternately operated its two quarries, approximately 28 miles apart, to crush and screen enough rock to meet the local product demands. But local crushed stone products sales simply were not sufficient to justify operating either quarry year-round. According to Jim Drew, plant manager for both facilities, each plant was operated intermittently, based on the quantities of crushed stone products wanted by the respective quarry's local customers.
"We might crush for two months at one quarry and then crush at the other quarry for three months, and then go back and crush at the first plant for another two to three months," he explained. "We not only crushed to meet the customers' immediate crushed stone products needs, but crushed additionally to maintain an inventory of products. Operating the plants alternately has worked out very well for us. I would say in most years, each plant is operated a total of five to six months."
 Eagle Crusher 1400-45 |
Growth demanded change
By 2005, the demand for the company's products became so great that it could no longer meet the customers' demands by using the alternate-quarry operations program. It meant that a second productions crew would be needed so both plants could be operated concurrently. Putting an additional crew on the payroll certainly is one way to balance the crushed stone products supply-and-demand issues — and, on the first view, it would appear to make the most business sense.
But that's not the case here. After careful consideration, Willard decided that hiring a second crew would not be the most economical and cost-effective option to increase crushed stone production. Willard and Drew looked at alternatives, and concluded the best method for increasing production beyond operating one of the stationary plants was to use a portable crushing/screening plant.
 Company Snapshot |
Part of their rationale was that the size crew required to efficiently operate a portable plant would be fewer people than a crew needed to operate either existing stationary crushing/screening plant. To illustrate, the company's new portable crushing-screening plant, which is an Eagle Crusher Portable UltraMax 1400-5, requires only a three- or four-person crew. One worker operates a Komatsu 600 front-end loader fitted with a 9.24-cu.-yd. (heaped) capacity bucket to feed blasted rock to the crusher. This operator also oversees the Eagle Crusher plant while it is in operation. From the front-end loader's cab, he can stop it from running by using a remote control — an important safety feature.
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