began to process recycled concrete, a new
market for the small North Carolina company.
Recycled concrete now accounts for about 95 percent
of the business. Photos courtesy of Ironclad Marketing.
One of the wisest things an aggregate business owner can do is diversify.
As markets change, planning ahead and preparing to adapt is a key to making or breaking it. Not only that, but diversifying gives business owners an opportunity to explore markets they may have never before considered.
Riverside Sand Co., a family-owned business in Wallace, N.C., took this approach. For more than 25 years, Riverside specialized in processing sand and gravel for use in brick projects, playgrounds, golf courses and concrete pre-casting. The company also had a trucking division to deliver ordered materials to customers. It was the one thing that kept Riverside from being a one-channel company.
After a quarter of a century, the company had its trucking and sand-and-gravel operations down to a T. But Wade Norris, Riverside’s vice president, knew such a narrow focus could be dangerous long term. So he began to look into options for the next move.
Little did Norris know at the time, but the steps he took to diversify were the pivotal points in shaping Riverside’s future.
Staying alive
Norris researched new markets and machinery and saw an opportunity with an aggregate business that was closing its doors.
The North Carolina operation Norris targeted had focused on processing materials for the concrete market, a segment Riverside had never served. Norris knew there was opportunity with the company and its large range of equipment, including an 18-year-old IRock RDS-15 closed-circuit plant. Norris visited the business owner’s site to see the unit in action.
Riverside had been operating with a stationary impact crusher from a different manufacturer to process sand and gravel. While it appeared to be meeting the company’s needs, Norris was just seeing a glimpse of the productivity the company had been missing out on.
Norris was convinced that the machine, which had several features to increase efficiencies, would open a door for new opportunities. Not only that, but the unit incorporated both a screener and a crusher.
In addition, the unit is capable of recirculating material. After an initial round of screening, operators can set the machine to automatically return both decks of oversized material back to the crusher for additional sizing.
Riverside’s previous system required an extra person and an additional loader or excavator to pick up oversized materials and manually re-feed the crusher.
Norris also believed the RDS-15 would help Riverside branch out even further than he initially hoped, as well as allow the company to perform contract work for concrete customers along the East Coast. With the portable unit, he and his team could essentially go where the work was rather than wait for it to come to them.
This was possible because the crushing plant’s rapid deployment system (RDS) makes the unit portable, not to mention quick and easy to set up – key benefits if the Riverside crew were to take the unit on the road.
Norris jumped at the chance to purchase the crushing plant. Overnight, Riverside gained the ability to process recycled concrete, a brand-new market for the small company. On top of that, Riverside was able to offer its services on the go. With the RDS-15, Riverside could provide customers on-site crushing services. The machine was ideal for companies that had materials to crush yet lacked the equipment to do so.
Riverside quickly gained concrete customers, and it wasn’t long before its customer base grew exponentially. Quickly, the company’s usual residential and commercial builders, manufacturers and landscapers took advantage of Riverside’s expanded offerings.
In addition, new customers learned of the crushing services by word of mouth and began requesting products and services.
“We couldn’t continue to put all of our eggs in one basket,” Norris says. “If we had kept relying strictly on sand and gravel, I don’t know that we would have survived when market demands changed. But expanding our services to include crushing concrete and on-the-go crushing gave us another avenue of income when the sand business was down.”
New impact
with the purchase of an older IRock RDS-15,
which Riverside Sand Co. purchased from a
former North Carolina business. It was the first time
Norris was able to see the productivity
Riverside was missing out on for years.
The RDS-15 closed-circuit plant made all the difference for both Riverside and its expanding customer base, Norris adds. The RDS-15’s return conveyor cuts out associated operating expenses and labor costs. For example, in a 10-hour day, an employee earns about $200. Add the cost of running, fueling, repairing and maintaining an additional piece of equipment, which averages about $100 per hour, and the total is roughly $7,200 in a six-day work week, Norris says.
Norris says concrete has risen to the top of Riverside’s production list and now accounts for about 95 percent of the business. The company crushes an average of 800 tons of concrete per day, he says.
In the end, Norris decided the used RDS-15 would serve best as a backup crusher and screening plant, and that Riverside could further excel with a new crusher on the front lines. During a phone call with an IRock representative, Norris discussed purchasing a new unit. Just three months after he purchased the used machine, he and IRock closed the deal on a new RDS-15.
However, rather than using the new RDS-15 on site as he expected, the new unit became the company’s traveling machine whereas the intended standby crusher remained a fixture at the Riverside site. Riverside has been running both crushers steadily since, Norris says.
Riverside’s mobile crew and machine travel to sites within two hours of the company’s home base, where contractors have stockpiled anywhere from 4,000 to more than 165,000 tons of material for Riverside to crush and sort.
The RDS-15’s closed-circuit design makes it ideal for the road, Norris adds. Because the machine incorporates both a screener and a crusher, there’s little need to purchase or haul a screener separately.
“The bottom line is, this plant is the whole kit and caboodle on one chassis,” Norris says. “We can drag it down the road, pull into a customer’s site and set up. We don’t have to haul the crusher with one truck and a screen with another. It’s all right there together.”
Riverside’s traveling crew recognizes the importance of this, Norris adds, as the RDS-15 is just a portion of the traveling operation. Considering conveyors, excavators and other equipment, the crew transports nine loads of equipment in and out of each job. So one less load is something the Riverside crew embraces.