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Bluebird Stone expands equipment range to enter aggregate market
Bluebird Stone, an Oklahoma-based producer, finds the ideal mix of equipment needed to venture into the aggregate market. Keep Reading
Inside a Knife River crushing operation
A Knife River operation in Oregon is poised to pounce on a rebounding market behind its new jaw and cone crushing plants. Keep Reading
New order: Renewing a crusher lineup
Replacing a broken crusher made a big difference for the Lafarge Pitt River Quarry. Rethinking the operation’s existing crusher arrangement made an even bigger difference. Operations at the Lafarge Pitt River granite quarry in British Columbia, Canada, were running smoothly enough in 2013, churning out about 990 tph of high-quality aggregate used in Superpave, asphalt and concrete applications. When a mainframe cracked on a 54-in. cone crusher, Quarry Manager Robert Brakes sought bids to replace the quaternary unit, which was too old to warrant repair. Brakes ultimately weighed four replacement offers. Among the finalists was Elrus Aggregate Systems, a Sandvik Construction dealer for western Canada, which supplied the quarry’s secondary crushing unit – a Sandvik S6800. Elrus representative Mike Wikdahl believed a common platform unit to the S6800 – the Sandvik CH660 stationary cone crusher – would be a perfect addition to the crushing system. After he studied the company’s operation, Wikdahl went one step further. “We initially offered what our customer requested – a straightforward replacement of the quaternary… Keep Reading
Incorporating a rail line into a quarry and transportation system
Missouri was a hotbed of rock formation several hundred million or a few billion years ago. Magma periodically flowed beneath and above the surface of the earth, cooling and hardening. Today, the southern part of the Show Me State contains vast tonnage of Precambrian granite and trap rock to show for its molten past. Trap Rock and Granite Quarries LLC’s reserves feature Missouri red granite and trap rock deposits. This year, the company will begin to tap the rich groundswell with a state-of-the-art quarry loadout operation. The plan Trap Rock and Granite Quarries owns 3,200 acres in southern Illinois and southeast Missouri, with more than 1,100 of those acres situated 85 miles south of St. Louis near Iron Mountain, Mo. The 1,100-acre parcel was purchased three years ago after geologists concluded it contains an estimated 1 billion tons of granite and trap rock. But just as enticing to the company was what lay adjacent to the property: a main line of the Union Pacific Railroad. Union Pacific has about 1,400… Keep Reading
Need for proppant
A Minnesota company creates a new start-up operation to meet frac sand demand. In ancient times, sea water washed across Wisconsin and Minnesota, eventually leaving sand on the sea bottom that was uniformly hard and round. Eons later, the sand was discovered to be particularly desirable for use in horizontal hydraulic fracturing. So the granular material is being gobbled up, carted away and injected into the ground again to prop open subterranean cracks so oil or gas can ooze out. Because this sand lies near the surface in Wisconsin, more than 100 proposed or operating mines have been organized to skim off the silicate material for fracking companies that can’t get enough of it. Tiller Corp. entered this commercial fray two years ago. The 67-year-old Minnesota gravel and asphalt company based in Maple Grove was introduced to the business in 2010 when it began washing material for Preferred Sands LLC. Tiller soon decided that the booming market for proppant sand perfectly complemented its core business, particularly in a stagnant road-building… Keep Reading
