John Scepaniak is bundled up on a frigid November morning in Rollag, Minnesota.
The temperature cracks 30 degrees as the sun finally makes an appearance in the 8 o’clock hour. The weather has been cooperative for this time of year, presenting yet another day for Wm. D. Scepaniak to run the spread at its contract crushing operation 30 miles east of Fargo, North Dakota.
In this part of the U.S., there are only so many good crushing days left. So contract crushers like Scepaniak absolutely must make hay while the sun shines.
“Right now it’s early November, so there are going to be some good days left,” says Scepaniak, the mining project manager at Wm. D. Scepaniak, when visited in Rollag. “It’s chilly, but once the sun’s up the belts get hot.”
Wm. D. Scepaniak staffs two crews at Rollag that run around the clock in 11-days-on, 3-days-off cycles because the weather is unlikely to be in the company’s favor every day.
“So the more uptime we have, the better we can push and get product on the ground,” Scepaniak says. “That builds us a buffer for spring, because we’ll be back here [in 2022].”
Production driven
Wm. D. Scepaniak, which is based in Holdingford, Minnesota – about 90 miles northwest of Minneapolis – has been contract crushing for a local producer in Rollag for about eight years. The site is Scepaniak’s highest-volume location, trending in 2021 between 1.5 million and 1.75 million tons.
“The standard always was every plant should get 1 million tpy,” Scepaniak says. “That’s a good target for us.”
Companywide, Wm. D. Scepaniak projected to finish 2021 around 7.5 million tons. The company runs 10 or 11 spreads at any given time during the production season, Scepaniak says, with some of its smaller jobs in the 30,000- to 40,000-ton territory.
Wm. D. Scepaniak takes on a range of jobs each year that collectively add into the millions, with crews transitioning from site to site as opportunities arise.