has been really phenomenal when we get into areas with metals that
would cause problems.” Photos courtesy of J. Pettiecord
Some contractors couldn’t care less about foreign objects being mixed in with the organic materials they dump at processing yards.
But those foreign objects can become major problems for producers, whose horizontal grinders are at risk of catastrophic breakdowns should steel find its way into the wrong place.
Most producers have found themselves in such predicaments at least once before. Nick Wylie, executive vice president at Iowa-based J. Pettiecord, found himself in one of those moments in 2013.
Wylie was exploring a Crambo 6000 shredder from Komptech USA for the very first time. He and visiting Komptech reps were testing the machine’s abilities at shredding trees when something apparently went wrong.
“I was loading the thing myself, and it was either a cutting edge for a scraper or a wheel loader that got into the Crambo,” Wylie says. “It was a big piece of metal, 2 ft. long by 9 in. wide by 1 in. thick.”
Wylie immediately heard a “bang.” He pressed the remote stop button and took a look inside the shredder with the Komptech reps.
“This big piece of steel was sitting in the machine,” Wylie says. “It had broken off a tooth from the shaft. The magnet caught it, but the only thing it actually broke was a bolt that was holding it.”
The Komptech reps happened to have another bolt in their possession, so they replaced the old one and reattached the tooth. According to Wylie, the shredder was back up and running within five minutes.
“That would have been a $20,000 to $30,000 cost otherwise,” he says.
The Crambo 6000 is one of several portable plants J. Pettiecord now regularly depends on across Iowa and neighboring Nebraska. As the company’s presence in the demolition and land-clearing businesses grew starting in 2005, so did the number of portable-processing tools in the company’s fleet.
Now, several portable plants, including two 5710C horizontal grinders from Peterson Pacific Corp., a TR626 trommel screen from Vermeer, an ST272 two-deck screen from Metso and the Crambo 6000, are central to the company’s revenue generation.
“The portable plants have helped us become more versatile and a lot faster at what we do,” says Jeff Pettiecord, president of J. Pettiecord.
Landing opportunities
Management of J. Pettiecord’s processing equipment is largely the responsibility of Wylie and Laramie Ogden, the company’s estimator and projector manager. J. Pettiecord offers a number of services, including emergency pipeline management, environmental remediation and heavy haul trucking. Demolition and land clearing, however, have been tremendous growth areas for the company over the last decade.
According to Wylie, J. Pettiecord offers services in those areas across Iowa, and it ventures into Nebraska for land-clearing and grinding jobs. The company, which employs about 55 people, has 10 operators who are capable of running portable processing equipment.
State Department of Transportation (DOT) projects have driven a number of recent opportunities for J. Pettiecord to put its horizontal grinders to use, he adds.
“The Cedar Rapids, [Iowa], area and the Council Bluffs area of Iowa have had some really large projects going on,” Wylie says. “The Council Bluffs area is where I-29 and I-80 meet, and the DOT has been doing a $1.2 billion reconstruction over there.”
J. Pettiecord’s role in that area is largely to clear land for reconstruction.
“Out of roughly a dozen projects [we’ve] bid on over there, we’ve done every project but one from a land-clearing standpoint,” says Wylie, who adds that a 2015 state gas tax increase of 10 cents per gallon has provided a boost to J. Pettiecord’s business. “There’s a lot of DOT work going on, and I’m hoping it continues.”
According to Wylie, J. Pettiecord’s vast fleet of equipment, coupled with its ability to gets jobs done quickly, sets the company apart from competitors.
“We know what these guys are looking for,” he says. “They need us to get in, get the site cleared and get the heck out of there. Clearing 20 acres of trees with a chipper isn’t a good option. We’ve got large excavators, dozers and our big grinding equipment.”
Pleased with portables
J. Pettiecord fleet.
J. Pettiecord will sometimes use two horizontal grinders on a land-clearing job, depending on its size, Wylie adds. The company’s Crambo 6000 has been pretty involved lately in those types of jobs, too.
“That’s worked really well on some housing developments we’ve done,” Wylie says. “We’ll clear two to five acres of trees, and then we have an old farmstead where we’ll feed the trees through the Crambo and shred the house through the Crambo, pulling the steel out of it.”
In such a scenario, J. Pettiecord typically shreds about 60 tons of material, shredding it into two or three trailer loads. Through other processing methods, the job might require as many as 10 trailer loads, Wylie says.
“It cuts our trucking down, and we get the metal out of it,” he says. “That’s going to be a lot more important once the price of scrap metal goes up.”
As J. Pettiecord’s experience with the Crambo 6000 grew, the company realized the shredder is best suited for certain jobs while its 5710C horizontal grinders are more appropriate for others.
“The high-speed Peterson grinders are monsters, so processing trees in those is great,” Wylie says. “But the dirtier stuff – demolition [recyclables], railroad ties, roots – wears on grinders. The Crambo can handle the junkier stuff.
“If we’re in an area where we could hit a piece of metal or a railroad tie, the worst-case scenario with the Crambo is it might break off a tooth, but we’ll simply bolt it back on,” he adds.
J. Pettiecord’s TR626 trommel screen has been a reliable piece of equipment, as well.
“We’ve used it for a handful of things,” Wylie says. “For land clearing, it separates the roots and tree branches from the dirt. When we’re trying to clean up sites, we want to get in and out of projects as fast as possible so pipe can go in the ground. We want to have the cleanest products we can. Some competitors will use a stump grinder for similar projects, and the site looks like a bomb went off.”
The ST272 two-deck screen has also created some unique job opportunities for J. Pettiecord.
“We put it to use screening demo products,” Wylie says. “Last year, we had it running a big pile of contaminated soil with chunks of asphalt mixed in. We sent the pile through and screened it.”