Make more money with your material.
There are many benefits of using a custom crushing contractor over renting and operating a machine yourself. Most notably, it comes down to experience, efficiency, and a speedy process. Knowing your crushing plant inside out makes a big difference in running efficiently. Additionally, a custom crushing contractor provides an in-depth understanding of your business and helps you overcome your local jobsite-specific challenges.
Many crushing contractors also operate the ideal support equipment to get the job done faster. This may include:
Walk the job site with your custom crushing contractor to identify the best way to process your material. Understand the type of machine used and the limits in terms of feed size, material hardness, throughput capacity, and output size.
“Keep in mind that there is a difference between throughput capacity (in terms of tons per hour) and how much material can be produced in a day.”
If you are working on a remediation job or processing an old concrete pile, you often don’t know the feed material. Be prepared for surprises. Everything might look good on the outside, but you might find concrete pieces the size of a Volkswagen buried inside.
Make sure to agree with your custom crushing contractor on:
Oversize pieces don't fit into the crushing plant and need to be pre-processed ahead of time. Make sure to agree with your crushing contractor beforehand, who is responsible for sorting and preparing the material for crushing.
"As long as you are downsizing material you are being efficient. If your crusher is down your entire crew is down!"
If you are providing the excavator you can reduce the risk of blockages by using the right size bucket. E.g. a 40" bucket limits the size of the material that you can physically put into a crushing plant. Operators swing more often but they keep crushing. Hopper capacity does not equate to crusher capacity. A steady flow of material will win the race. Not the biggest bucket nor the biggest hopper.
A blockage causes not only downtime for your crusher but your entire crew. Make sure to understand the limits of the crushing plant. If you encounter oversize or uncrushable pieces, you are better off throwing them off to the side.
Each crushing operation needs a specific operating footprint. Expedite the setup of the crushing spread by preparing clean and level pads ahead of time.
Crushing concrete yields large amounts of rebar. Understand the crushing plant that your crushing contractor brings in so that you find a bin that fits its dimensions. Try to capture as much rebar as possible and have a ground laborer watch out for any issues.
If you are crushing concrete, make sure to sweep your job site with a hydraulic magnet to collect all ferrous materials efficiently. Also, make sure to clarify who keeps and disposes of the liberated steel?
Processing large piles of the material requires you to move a lot of material. Using a tracked conveyor eliminates the need for an additional operator and wheel loader to move your finished product. This way, your loader can be used for different jobs, and you can process your materials without any interruption.
Job-size | 5,000 | tons |
Crushing capacity | 1,200 | tons per 8-hours day |
Loader run-time (approx.) | 34 | Hours |
Loader cost incl fuel & operator | 130 | $ per hour |
Total loader cost | $4,420 |
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Cost to rent an 80’ stacker (approx.) | $3,850 | Price varies on model and location |
Learn more about tracked conveyors
You risk downtime through uncrushable objects such as fabrics, steel, wood, and other debris if you have no control over your inbound material. Having a tight material policy reduces the cost and hassle of dealing with the trash while processing your material. This could be charging more money for contaminated loads or separating clean from dirty material.
When you take down structures make sure to separate crushable material from uncrushables (wood, fabrics, windows, doors, mattresses, ...). In demolition, the goal is to tear down a building. The objective of deconstruction is to take down the building to salvage components or materials that can be reused and recycled.
If your material is a mix of debris and crushable material, it gets very costly to process because you must sort through the material before crushing it.
"A crushing plant is probably your most expensive piece on the Jobsite. You want to ensure to run it as short as possible."
Material management is as important as selecting the right custom crushing contractor. Your crew is down if the crushing operation is down because of a lack of suitable-sized feed material or the need to move the finished product. Use additional loaders or excavators to keep your crushing contractor busy and maximize your profits.
If your job site is a high-profile site under close control of the DEP or neighbors, make sure to use the dust suppression system of the crushing plant. You can use either standard pressure tap water, water from a pond in combination with a pump, or use a water trailer with a pump. 10 bar water pressure is typically enough to generate a fine water mist.
Mobile impact crushers are best fed from the side so that excvavators have a better control over the feed material. Make sure that no recirculating conveyors are on the far end and not in the way of the excavator.
As you process the pile clear the space behind the crusher so that you can back the crusher into the pile. This way you avoid to move the material to crusher.
Pro-tip: if your crusher can track & crush simultaneously you can windrow the crushed material.
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