July/August 1995
Mobile Equipment has enabled recyclers to process scrap on-the-fly for more than 30 years. And manufacturers say, the market for mobile machines is doing nothing but gaining momentum.
Kent Kiser
Kent Kiser is an associate editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling
If scrap had legs, there would be no need for mobile processing equipment.
But it doesn’t, and there is.
Not only is there a need, but there’s a big demand, say mobile equipment manufacturers and scrap recyclers alike. “I’ve noticed a steady increase in the use of mobile equipment,” says Jim Langland, vice president of sales and marketing of Al-jon Inc. (Ottumwa, Iowa), which manufactures mobile and stationary processing machinery. To hear him tell it, every type of scrap company—small, medium, and large—is buying mobile equipment and using it to process every type of scrap material, albeit primarily metals. And processor Richard O’Neal, president of Concrete and Steel Processors Inc. (Pineville, La.)—a mobile-only recycling business—confirms, “There’s a real big demand out there for mobility.”
Why the growing interest in going mobile? Among the many reasons is the improved scrap demand in recent months for many types of scrap. “As competition for scrap increases,” Langland explains, “operators are seeking out pockets of material that are economically accessible only with mobile processing equipment.”
Changes in the scrap supply have also boosted the need for mobility, notes Norm Kramer of Kramer Consultants (Dallas), which offers consulting services to the scrap and solid waste industries. “You’ve got fewer large accumulations of scrap around and more small deposits,” he says. “Recyclers need to have mobile equipment that can process and pick up small amounts of scrap and bring it to the marketplace at a modicum of cost.”
Manufacturers and processors also note that mobile equipment has gained in popularity because it offers greater versatility than stationary machinery, which can enable recyclers to minimize their equipment investments, achieve greater efficiencies, and open up new sourcing opportunities.
Just how big is the demand for this equipment? “A large percentage of our sales are for mobile equipment,” says Langland, estimating that Al-jon sells about four mobile machines for every one stationary, or static machine. And the ratio is similar for Sierra International Machinery Inc. (Bakersfield, Calif.), notes Jose Pereyra, the firm’s sales manager.
Indeed, from all indications, mobile equipment--which encompasses balers, loggers, guillotine shears, shear attachments, slow-speed shredders, car flatteners, and more--is one equipment sector that's on the move.
Processing On-the-Go
Since the scrap industry’s early days, recyclers have sometimes had to--or wanted to--travel to where the scrap is, both within their plants and off-site. And it was just this necessity/desire that spurred the development of mobile scrap processing equipment.
Though some portable processing equipment certainly existed in the industry's early decades, such machinery was usually small and not designed to be hauled off-site. The era of mobile over-the- road processing equipment didn't truly kick in until the 1960s, when the United States was having a problem with abandoned cars. To address this eyesore problem, the federal government--spurred by Lady Bird Johnson--passed the Highway Beautification Act, and scrap equipment manufacturers hit the drawing board to find a solution.
One of the fruits of their labors was the mobile auto flattener, which was developed almost simultaneously in 1965 by Al-jon, Mobile Auto Crushers Inc.—now Mac Corp./Saturn Shredders (Grand Prairie, Texas)—and Logemann Brothers Co. (Milwaukee). The Al-jon and Mac Corp. machines compressed car bodies under a descending platen, while the “Logemann Landscaper” flattener squashed car hulks between two rotating rollers. These flatteners were designed “to make it economically feasible to transport junked automobiles from the countryside to scrap dealers for further processing,” noted Scrap Age in 1966. Their other benefit was that they processed cars into a form desirable to shredder operators and ferrous consumers.
The mobile equipment niche took another step forward in1967 when Mosley Machinery Co. Inc. (Waco, Texas) introduced a trailer-mounted version of its HS-330 compression-box shear. This machine not only gave recyclers another way to process abandoned cars, it also gave those with multiple processing plants the option of buying one shear and hauling it from plant to plant, rather than installing static machines at each location. “With just one shear, you can easily service two or more yards,” Mosley’s as proclaimed.
Several other mobile balers and shears were developed in the early and mid-1970’s, but the next major advance in mobile processing equipment came in the mid-to-late-1970’s with the creation of the mobile shear attachment.
The impetus behind this development was the scrap industry's growing use of hydraulic excavator crawler cranes. While most of these machines were equipped with grapples and were used exclusively for material handling, a few manufacturers saw the potential to give these moveable machines processing capabilities. One such manufacturer was LaBounty Manufacturing (Two Harbors, Minn.), whose founder, Roy LaBounty, decided to attach a small shearing mouth to his popular contractor's grapple. Soon thereafter, his fm was producing shear-only attachments.
Around 1980, Mac Corp. expanded the mobile equipment niche further by introducing a mobile slow-speed tire shredder, and throughout the 1980s to today, the field has continued to be expanded and refined. Not only are there more choices of mobile equipment--designed to process everything from metals to plastics to glass--but the machines themselves now come equipped with more options, such as radio remote controls.
Exploring the Options
By far, a mobile machine's greatest asset is just that, its mobility, manufacturers and processors agree. And to them, mobility means versatility, as can be seen in the diverse ways in which the equipment can be--and is--used.
One prevalent way is for a scrap company that owns several operations within reasonable proximity to move a mobile machine from location to location to save on equipment costs. “Instead of buying a stationary machine for each plant or feeder yard, you can buy one piece of mobile equipment to process material at your yards on a rotating basis,” says Sierra’s Pereyra.
That’s the main reason why Hilton Humble, president of American Metals Co. Inc. (Mesa, Ariz.), bought a mobile baler/logger in the past year. “We needed a machine to bale out sheet metal, but we have two yards,” Humble explains. “We needed the machine to be mobile so it could go from one of our yards to the other.”
Yet recyclers don’t have to cart mobile equipment off-site to take advantage of its mobility. “The fact that the machine is mobile means you can move it around even within your own yard, which is a big advantage in itself,” Al-jon’s Langland points out.
Mobile equipment is also called into action when a recycler needs to process scrap at remote locations or industrial accounts, which encompasses myriad situations. Processing companies that shred tires or bale white goods, for example, must often travel from county landfill to county landfill to access the material. Other recyclers use mobile equipment to process material at demolition sites, industrial plants, and even farms. In these situations, mobile equipment processes scrap into a form that’s easier and more economical to transport to the recycler’s main processing facility or directly to consumers. “You can’t afford to ship loose material because you’ll be shipping no weight,” Pereyra notes.
How else are mobile machines used? Some recyclers hire-out their mobile machines to other processors for short-term assignments, working on either a set-free contract or a per-ton basis. One Midwest stainless recycler, for instance, rents an excavator equipped with a mobile shear attachment a few days a month from another local scrap operator to process its oversized material. In another case, a Southwest recycler contracts a neighboring processor to bring in its crane-equipped portable baler/logger to work through its No. 2 ferrous pile about a day every week.
And then there are free-lance, or contract, processors who have no physical plants, but instead own and operate mobile processing businesses exclusively.
Stewart Shaft is one such processor. His 12-year-old firm, Great Plains Recycling (Sioux Falls, S.D.), scours the Midwest, using two excavators with shear attachments and one excavator with a grapple or magnet to process primarily ferrous farm scrap. “The farmers gather their iron in a minimum of 100-ton lots, and we process and pay for it, “Shaft says. In these cases, the firm buys the scrap, processes it to No. 2 status, and either sells it directly to a consumer or to another processor as prepared material. Occasionally, the company is hired by a stationary recycler to process a backlog of material, Shaft says noting, “We like to move into someone else’s yard during the slower winter months.”
Richard O’Neal of Concrete and Steel Processing also falls into this Niche. His 5-year-old firm processes concrete and all grades of ferrous scrap using two portable balers and five excavators equipped with shear attachments. The company services the South and Midwest, sometimes processing material on a fee basis, other times buying it and reselling it to stationary recycling operations. “I don’t want to set up my own plant because I have friends in the scrap business,” O’Neal remarks. “Every area needs a stationary processor, but sometimes the processor has to go to the material.”
Purchasing Points to Ponder
In general, the decision whether or not to buy mobile processing equipment comes down to two factors:
First, do you need transportable equipment? “If a recycler has a need for portability, then a static machine is not a factor,” says Gunn Phillips, sales director of Lindemann Recycling Equipment Inc. (Pineville, N.C.), which primarily manufactures stationary processing equipment.
And, second, do you process enough tonnage at one location to merit a stationary machine? If not, then a mobile machine might be a more-prudent investment.
Before you rush out and buy a mobile machine, however, you should consider the pros and cons of this equipment, including the following points.
Maintenance. Though mobile machines, as a group, are generally smaller and lighter than stationary equipment, they equally as durable and don’t require any additional maintenance, manufacturers report. The reason, Pereyra asserts, is that “wear-and-tear is based on the tonnage you run through a machine, not its size.”
Mobile equipment can have different maintenance concern than static machines, however. For instance, since most mobile machines run on diesel engines rather than the electric motors commonly used in static machines, operators must keep up with standard diesel engine maintenance , such as changing filters and checking the oil and water. Also, when mobile equipment is mounted on a trailer, there’s the added need to tale care of the trailer itself, including its lights and tires.
There’s also the question of whether portable machinery suffers extra wear from being carted over bumpy roads. Manufactures say no. “Like a semitrailer,” Langland asserts, “this equipment is designed to be pulled thousands of miles a year, so there’s no additional wear-and-tear as far as hauling the trailer around.”
Taking equipment on the road, however, can put recyclers in a vulnerable position when it comes to maintenance of not only their processing machinery, but also the ancillary equipment—such as excavators and loaders—sometimes hauled along to feed it, manufacturers and processors admit. “When you’re mobile, you don’t have a service department around,” Pereyra noted. Something can go wrong when you’re really far away from your maintenance base.” Or, as Norm Kramer puts it, “Being away from home is not an advantage.” To minimize such breakdown concerns, Humble requires his mobile baler crew to “have spare parts on hand on the vehicle, especially hydraulic hoses.”
Capabilities. When it comes to size and production capacity, mobile machines face several limits, mostly due to highway weight restrictions. While these restrictions vary from state to state, they generally prohibit portable equipment from tipping the scales at more than 80,000 pounds, including the tractor. “A machine can only be so large, and that’s the end of it,” states Humble.
And with a mobile guillotine shear, for instance, “you can’t put pieces longer than 20 feet into the shear’s box,” Pereyra notes, adding, “You’re restricted by dimensions.” The highway weight rules also often translate to a cap on the processing speed of mobile machines, with current portable balers and shears, for instance, having the capacity to process a maximum of 8 to 10 tons an hour.
Cost. Comparing the process of mobile vs. static machines can be difficult because, in some cases, the two are apples and oranges—that is, you can’t compare machines with similar capacities and features. “The portable unit size isn’t always easily relatable to static units,” says Lindemann’s Phillips. “There isn’t a fair comparison.”
When you do find an apples-to-apples situation—when a machine is made in both mobile and stationary models—the price of the mobile machine "is almost always 30-percent higher than the static model," says Jack West, executive vice president of Mac Corp., which makes mobile and stationary car flatteners and baler/loggers. Why the higher cost? Because, he explains, mobile equipment has "all the tires and trailers and brakes and government regulations that you don't have with static machines. Plus, diesel engines are a lot more expensive than electric motors."
As an antidote to potential sticker shock, however, manufacturers assert that the greater cost of portable equipment is more than outweighed by the benefits offered by the equipment’s mobility and versatility.
Environmental factors. Portable equipment also presents unique environmental concerns, some tied to the potential to process possibly hazardous material on someone else’s property. To address this problem, some pieces of mobile equipment have additional environmental safeguards built into them. The beds of car flatteners, for instance, are designed to catch and funnel automotive fluids such as crankcase oil, gasoline, brake fluid, and antifreeze into a separate drum or collection pan.
In general, however, the best protection in these cases is to refuse to process potentially hazardous scrap, manufacturers suggest.
Another environmental concern is the potential for a mobile machine to leak hydraulic oil on another's property. “With portable processing equipment, you've got a hydraulic animal, and most hydraulic animals leak--and leaking oil presents a concern,” Phillips asserts.
If you use the equipment at regular sites, such as moving it among company-owned plants, you can take steps to ensure the machines safe operation—for example, by providing a hard-surfaced, bermed processing site. If, on the other hand, you’re hailing the equipment to different locations all the time, this type of protection isn’t possible. In such cases, an effective preventive maintenance program is your best protection, manufacturers agree. “My advice is to check the equipment every day—the hoses, lines, and fittings,” West says. “It only takes 15 minutes and can save you a lot of trouble.”
Coming to mobile equipment's environmental defense, Langland asserts that major hydraulic leaks are “a rare occurrence,” and manufacturers continue to address the problem head-on. Mac Cop, for one, installs as many steel hydraulic lines as possible on its mobile equipment, as opposed to flexible hoses, to preclude leaks and ruptures. And R.M. Johnson Co. Inc. ( Annandale , Minn. ), which makes mobile and stationary car crushers and baler/loggers, has changed the design of some its equipment to “get hydraulic hoses out of harm's way,” says Ralph Johnson, vice president.
What's in Store?
Though there is currently a wide range of mobile equipment available, what, if any, new mobile equipment is on the drawing board? And what would recyclers like to see developed?
A portable ferrous scrap shredder is “an idea that everyone has in the back of his mind,” Pereyra notes, “but that's a self-destructive piece of equipment. If you make it heavy-duty enough to last, it's too heavy to transport.” Even so, an English company has reportedly already built--but not yet perfected--a portable ferrous shredder. “I'd like to see it developed,” O'Neal says, “but I don't think there'll ever be one.”
In the meantime, manufacturers are focusing their attention on improving their existing lines of portable machines. “We're constantly at work refining our mobile equipment,” Langland says, noting, for example, that Al-jon is always looking at how to reduce the weight, increase the strength, speed up the hydraulic cycle time, and boost the production of its mobile lines—“anything that would make the equipment perform better and easier for the customer.”
Mobile Equipment has enabled recyclers to process scrap on-the-fly for more than 30 years. And manufacturers say, the market for mobile machines is doing nothing but gaining momentum.