Vol. XIV No. 5
September / October 2020
Serving Soil, Mulch, Compost & Wood Pellet Producers www.SoilandMulchProducerNews.com
NEWS
Radial Stacking Conveyors Pile Up Business Accolades By P.J. Heller
Z
ach Eaton remembers how long it used to take when loaders had to stack soil and mulch at the P.R. Russell facility in New Hampshire. “If we got 20 trucks [with raw material] in a day, it would take all day and maybe some of the next day to stack it [the processed material] and get it up the hill with a loader,” he says. No longer. “Today, what they would bring in in a week, we would be able to put up in a day,” says Eaton, yard manager at Russell since 2007. What brought about the boost in efficiency — along with several other benefits — was the addition of a radial stacking conveyor. Stacking conveyors are used to stockpile material, such as soil, mulch, compost and aggregates, and can reduce or eliminate the need for wheel loaders. Conveyors can be fixed or tracked, allowing them to be easily moved around a facility. Models are available with varying feeder belt widths (i.e. 36 inch or 48 inch) and with various lengths or discharge heights, allowing for piles of different heights. Conveyors that rotate 180 degrees make it easy to place multiple piles next to each other. While Eaton cites the productivity improvements with the radial stacking conveyor, he says the main emphasis for the purchase about eight years ago was due to skyrocketing fuel prices. “When fuel prices were extremely high, we decided we needed to do something to the get material up the hill and not use so much fuel,” he explains. “We went from using 60 to 70 gallons a day on a loader to using 6 to 8 gallons a day on a stacking conveyor with a 4-cylinder diesel. “There definitely is a huge savings,” he adds. “The machine definitely paid for itself within the first year.”
In addition to the fixed 125-foot radial stacking conveyor with its 48-inch-wide belt — which can create a mulch pile 52 feet high with 11,000 yards of material — P.R. Russell also operates a smaller 80-foot tracked conveyor with a 36-inch belt. “When it comes down to really producing, we use the bigger stacker,” Eaton says, noting that with the company now in the throes of making product for the upcoming season, that larger conveyor “is definitely getting a workout.” Russell, based in Brentwood, NH, serves the New England area, selling bagged and bulk mulch and playground chips as well as bagged soils and compost. The company is contemplating adding a third stacking conveyor. The conveyors allowed Russell to achieve other benefits, including labor savings, cutting maintenance costs on its wheel loaders and improved safety. Other soil and mulch producers echo those benefits. “Yes, all those benefits are there using stacking conveyors,” agrees Steve Jarahian, director of technical services at Oldcastle Lawn & Garden in Anderson, SC. “We installed
[stacking conveyors] at several plants over the last 10 years to save loader time, space and money.” “We have moved many plants over to conveying product especially when building stockpiles and feeding bag plants that are adjacent to the processing mills,” adds Jim McKay, manager of regional operations for Oldcastle APG in the Northeast. “Depending on the conveyor length and setup, you can stack 50,000 yards before moving one yard of material,” Jarahian says. Oldcastle has installed stacking conveyors at some of its more than 40 manufacturing plants located along the East Coast, the Gulf Coast of Florida and in the Midwest. The conveyors are a mix of rubber tire and tracked machines depending on terrain. They are used for stacking raw mulch, colored mulch, and screened pine bark fractions. “Size, widths and lengths are all over the board,” Jarahian says of the conveyors. McKay notes that conveyors used in the mulch industry are typically equipped with 36-inch-wide belts and range in length from 20 to 300 feet. Continued on page 3