grinder provides secondary grinds at Kurtz Bros.’ Bridgeview
site in Valley View, Ohio. A Morbark 3800 horizontal grinder
is largely put to use for the company’s primary grinding
activities. Photos by Kevin Yanik
Crushing, grinding and screening plants are strategically positioned across three northeast Ohio sites Kurtz Bros. Inc. operates.
Two of those sites sit within a few miles of each other just south of downtown Cleveland. One site, Bridgeview in Valley View, Ohio, produces the majority of Kurtz Bros.’ mulches and soils. Another nearby site, the RKDF/Kurtz Bros. Reclamation Facility in Brooklyn Heights, Ohio, is home to the company’s C&D recycling operation.
Portable processing equipment is fundamental to both operations.
“We created a company-wide goal primarily focused on portable plants,” says Matt Malone, director of operations at Kurtz Bros. “Loaders, excavators and dozers are relatively simple and easy to rent, but if our soil plant goes down we can’t make soil. If you’ve got to run a grinder, they’re expensive to run and typically a lot more challenging to find – especially for an application with specific screen sizes.”
Kurtz Bros., which produces between 175,000 and 200,000 cu. yd. of mulches per year and about 150,000 cu. yd. of soils, is keen on metrics, Malone adds. The company is continuously searching for small improvements that can boost annual production rates to maximum heights.
“We find that we win or lose by inches,” he says. “Five [cu.] yd. per hour can be [the difference] between a significant win or loss. If you can generate 5 extra [cu. yd.] per hour, that adds up over 2,000 hours per year.”
Yard waste recycling
at the RKDF/Kurtz Bros. Reclamation Facility in Brooklyn
Heights, Ohio. The Warrior 1800 separates raw C&D
materials into oversize, mid-grade and fine materials.
Oversize is processed further in a two-plant setup that
includes a Powerscreen Premiertrak R400 jaw crusher and
another Warrior 1800.
Grinding equipment is essential to the production of Kurtz Bros.’ composts, soils and mulches. The company operates three grinders in all across locations. When visited this summer, a CBI Magnum Force 4000 Series Wood Hog horizontal grinder was in use at Bridgeview.
Kurtz Bros. uses the 4000 for a secondary grind, according to Malone, while a Morbark 3800 horizontal grinder, which rotates between sites, offers a first grind.
“The 3800 is the primary,” Malone says. “It has the best metal protection. We’ll use that on pallets and the majority of the yard waste. The material we bring in typically always has a good amount of metal in it, so the 3800 helps to prevent catastrophic failures.”
A Morbark 1300 tub grinder also offers a primary grind, albeit at another Kurtz Bros facility in Avon, Ohio. But the company typically prefers the tub grinder to finish products.
“It does a primary grind, but the 3800 does a much more efficient job [as the primary],” says Malone, who estimates that 70 percent of the company’s yard waste is ground in Avon.
A portable topsoil screening plant from Terex Finlay is set up at Bridgeview, as well. In fact, Kurtz Bros. has three of these same plants at various locations. Another is located in Avon, and a third is positioned behind the company’s main office in Valley View, where specialty blending is done for certain mixes.
The topsoil screening plant at Bridgeview largely produces the company’s all-purpose sand/clay blend, Malone says.
Within eyeshot of the topsoil screener at Bridgeview are two other portable plants: a Powerscreen Powergrid scalping screen that discharges heavier stone; and a McCloskey International 621 trommel screen that’s typically used to process compost.
MC1400 material classifier/air separator from Edge Innovate
at the RKDF/Kurtz Bros. Reclamation Facility. Kurtz Bros.
worked with local dealer Aggcorp on the trial.
“For compost, we probably process two to three times per year,” Malone says. “There are times when that comes in and times when it doesn’t.”
Yard waste that arrives at Bridgeview is strategically positioned so the material can dry prior to it being processed.
“The drier we can get it, the less overs we have that we eventually would have to re-handle,” Malone says. “We’ll stockpile it, grind it and ultimately screen it.”
Considering Cleveland’s bitter-cold winters, the company traditionally does not operate year-round.
“We try not to do too much processing in the winter,” Malone says. “It’s not nearly as efficient because there are a lot of startup and shutdown times; a lot of maintenance issues. We do process some, but we try to eliminate it.”
So it’s vital to operate when conditions are dry.
“There are only so many windows to process the material dry,” says Malone, who adds that the milder weather conditions of the 2015-16 winter allowed Kurtz Bros. to produce more.
“We sold soil all throughout the winter,” he adds. “We work with a lot of construction companies who kept their jobs going. The way we stockpile and manage our piles, we’re able to access them even in the dead of winter. It’s not the easiest thing to do – or the cheapest – but it was great to have that type of income through the winter months.”
C&D recycling
Terex Finlay at the company’s Bridgeview site. Kurtz Bros. has
three topsoil screening plants at three different locations in
the Cleveland area.
While Bridgeview produces composts, mulches and soils, the nearby RKDF/Kurtz Bros. Reclamation Facility extracts aggregate, metal and wood from C&D material.
“We have two different recycling areas on our site,” Malone says. “If a house or a building comes down, all of the lighter material comes one way. We pull the wood of that; the aggregate gets crushed; and there’s a lot of metal.”
That “lighter-material” plant is a stationary setup. A second plant made up of portable units sits in the back of the Brooklyn Heights facility. This plant handles materials Malone describes as “heavy,” or “low grade.”
“It’s primarily aggregate-type material,” he says, adding that the plant produces approximately 300 tons per day when in use.
A Powerscreen Warrior 1800 screening plant separates raw materials into three different piles – an oversize, a mid-grade and a fine. The oversize, like the oversize produced from the site’s stationary plant, is fed into a Powerscreen Premiertrak R400 jaw crusher. That jaw works in tandem with another Warrior 1800 to produce 57s, 304s, 411s and other recycled aggregates. The plant produces about 100 tph, Malone says.
Until recently, the Warrior 1800 that processes the heaviest materials only produced one salable product: oversize. But Kurtz Bros. recently purchased an MC1400 material classifier/air separator from Edge Innovate that produces a salable mid-grade material within the plant.
“The Edge unit is able to pull out all the wood and plastic,” says Malone, who adds that Aggcorp Equipment Systems, a local dealer, recommended the MC1400. “The trash comes out. Then, the clean aggregate that would have previously been thrown away can be recycled.”
Planning for the future
Because Kurtz Bros. operates a variety of portable plants, it’s essential for the company to employ a number of people who are capable of maintaining equipment.
Kurtz Bros. currently has several mechanics on staff, and it’s been fortunate to retain a number of good mechanics over the years, says Matt Malone, the company’s operations director.
“They are very talented at what they do,” he says. “A lot of it is having the aptitude to learn on the job.”
Still, Malone recognizes the challenge ahead to fill mechanic positions as current employees retire. Kurtz Bros. has had some luck hiring mechanics, bringing two new hires on board within the last five years. But finding versatile mechanics who can work on a range of machines is a growing concern.
“Finding good-quality, experienced mechanics is next to impossible,” Malone says. “If they’re good, they’re working. If they’re not working, there’s probably a reason why they’re not working.”
One step Kurtz Bros. took to ensure the company retains a full staff of mechanics is to partner with a technical school.
“I work with Cuyahoga Valley Career Center,” Malone says. “We do internships with them through their power equipment courses. We’re on our second student now.”