Grinding it out in the land clearing business

C&D recycling
Grinding it out in the
land clearing business
Tracked horizontal grinder enables contractor
to ‘take it to the woods’
by Keith Barker, Editor
T
homas McKellar hails from a
business/marketing and landdevelopment background. Today,
he is President and owner of
Site Prep, a cutting-edge land clearing
business specializing in pipeline rightof-ways (generally 50 miles and less) as
well as general construction site clearing.
He also runs BiomassChippers.us, an
in-woods chipping and grinding specialist
company.
McKellar definitely considers himself
to be, in part, a waste-wood/organic
materials recycler. With Site Prep he
has about eight years of what he calls
big pipeline experience, clearing land
on right-of-way construction jobs, and
managing the resulting organic materials. For the majority of his time as owner
of Site Prep, McKellar has used tracked
mulchers for his stump grinding and land
clearing work. In the fall of 2014, he
purchased a CBI Magnum Force 6400T
horizontal tracked grinder manufactured
by Newton, New Hampshire-based Continental Biomass Industries. He is currently using it in place of multiple pieces
of equipment, including his old stump
grinders and his former chippers and
horizontal grinders, which he has since
sold. He says he has not looked back.
Developing a niche
“Part of our business is working as a
biomass harvester, or collector,” explains
McKellar. “This is the grinding and
chipping side of the business. We grind
railroad ties, and chip whole trees, which
go to companies who use the end product
to produce energy. This is really where I
want to take my business.
“I’m currently working a specialized
job in Dallas, grinding railroad ties. There
are very few big machines that are mobile, and which will run as productively
as a large, stationary electric machine.
And there’s not many machines that can
grind railroad ties. It’s a special niche that
I think we’re going to stick with, using
CBI grinders, because they are just so
productive.
“CBI makes different types of rotors for
the 6400T,” continues McKellar. “In the
CBI, you can run a chipper drum, a forged
grinding drum, or you can use a solid steel
rotor with a ‘brute drum’ package. The
brute rotor really lends itself to handling
almost anything. There is less of a chance
of a catastrophic failure, even if railroad
tie plates get in the grinder by accident.
“You do lose some time when you’re
grinding railroad ties because you’re
taking the time to sort through them,
looking for the metal plates attached to
them. This means we can’t just grab and
throw them in the grinder. You pick up
10 to 15 of them at a time. The operator
is loading with a material handler with
a full rotation grapple on it, and there’s
about a 15-second delay to check them
over. So we’re running about 60 to 70
percent of maximum machine capacity
when processing railroad ties, which gets
us about 100 tonnes per hour.
“When we go to our secondary grind,
we take the six-inch screen out and put in
a two-inch screen. There’s a lot of material that comes out of the six-inch screen
that is already sized correctly, and we can
just go wide open with a pair of six-yard
CBI caption - photo to show
Thomas McKellar with his 6400T.
wheel loaders dumping from each side,
and just put everything into the grinder.
We get as much as 150 tonnes an hour
that way, even going through a two-inch
screen.
“We can go into many specialized jobs
with our tracked CBI mobile grinder.
They are very versatile in ‘less-than wide
open conditions’, such as in confined
plants and factories, or on a smaller, twoto three-acre site. If you have a tracked
machine, you can make really good use
out of it in a limited space area where a
pull-behind or a big old tub will cause
you problems.”
On construction site clearing jobs,
McKellar explains the process he calls
“clearing and grubbing”.
“Let’s say a Wal-Mart shopping centre
is being built, along with surrounding
stores, which requires clearing of maybe
one hundred acres. Those sites can’t burn
most of the time, due to their proximity
to homes and urban development areas.
They can’t haul off debris in whole form,
like they can when it’s ground up. We
come in, cut down the trees, grub out the
stumps, grind it all up and haul it off.
“We deliver a stump-free site. It’s more
costly not to burn on-site, but that’s just
the way things are going.”
From in-woods grinding to
overseas markets
The CBI 6400T tracked horizontal grinder is available with four fieldswappable rotors for changing process requirements. Units can be used
to make mulch from trees and stumps, for chipping to custom sizes, or
for grinding highly contaminated C&D debris.
18 January/February 2015 Recycling Product News
“To understand the in-woods grinding,
or in-woods chipping side of my business
(BiomassChippers.us) let’s say a logging
contractor has a call to chip part of his
product. He hauls out part of it as logs,
and he may collect all of the leftover
product that is unmerchantable. Not
necessarily just the tops of trees and other
parts cut down, but the unmerchantable
types, or species of trees.
“We can take our CBI into the woods
to process material, eliminating a seven
or eight dollar per tonne transportation
cost for him to bring it to us. We chip it,
pick it up and bring it back to a plant that
Thomas McKellar of Site Prep with
his CBI 6400T tracked horizontal
grinder.
wants to buy the chips or mulch – usually
a paper mill or similar operation.
“Few machines have the ability to go
into the woods and produce what we call
mill or port-production. With my CBI,
I can produce product in the woods that
is as good as it can be done in a port, or
with a stationary electric machine.
“
All the money in
wood is in the
hauling. You haul it
from the woods to
the field, you get it
chipped or ground,
you haul it to a ship,
then you take it
overseas. It’s all in the
transportation.
Thomas McKellar
“And when I market my services, it
is all about providing a ‘green, environmentally-friendly, recyclable way,’” adds
McKellar. “I am selling a green way to
handle waste materials – no on-site burning and no burying.
“If my customers want the end product
to be half-inch, one-inch, two inch – if
they want it chipped or ground – we can
do it. There’s very few companies that
offer a machine with the versatility to
change from a grinder to a chipper and
produce a ship-load of material.
“All the money in wood is in the hauling. You haul it from the woods to the
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field, you get it chipped or ground, you
haul it to a ship, then you take it overseas.
It’s all in the transportation.
“To give you an idea, wood product is
being sold overseas for about $150 per
tonne. Eighty dollars of that is to ship it
there. And many overseas companies are
getting carbon-credits and their governments are mandating that 20 to 25 percent
of their burn needs to be in renewable
resources. That’s wood. It’s not plastic,
it’s not coal, it’s not natural gas or oil.
It’s wood in many different forms. And
different countries overseas want different types of product. Some want chipped,
some chipped and dried, some of them
want ground, and some will take whole
trees, just debarked and shipped to them.
It’s a huge, huge market to ship woodproduct overseas right now. The overseas
market in Europe and China is currently
out-paying the U.S. by far.
“The niche I’m trying to fill with
my grinder, is to ‘take the show’ to the
woods. The average logging contractor
doesn’t want to be capitally invested in
a million-dollar machine for grinding
and chipping. I can come in there and do
it for them, at a price that leaves them
plenty of room to make money.
“The economy of scale of the large
horsepower CBI machine allows me to
do this. You can’t afford to do this with
many competitive machines. They may
cost less, but they may only last five
years. My CBI machine may cost more,
but it will run 20,000 hours and last me, I
predict, ten to twelve years.”
weighs only 92,000 pounds. They built
me a line-walking beast! It has a 60-inch
wide-discharge belt and material comes
off it a foot-thick, and it never stops.”
Success to build on
McKellar doesn’t consider his companies to be large operations. He generally
runs with 10 to 20 employees and considers this to be part of his recipe for success. “My employees are my friends,”
McKellar says. “They are very well paid,
and I know they will not damage my
equipment. You can’t have a $25/hour operator running a million dollar machine.
And I’m right there working with them.
I am a 100 percent on-the-job owneroperator, working with my guys.”
McKellar adds that he is very proud
to say that his company has had zero
accidents or injuries for nine years, and
has an A+ rating with ISNetworld, an
online resource used to rate contractors
for safety and reliability (www.isnetworld.com).
“I also have to express my sincere
appreciation for the help I received from
Russ Meich of 5-Point Industries out
of Alvarado, Texas, in helping identify
markets which enabled me to purchase
my 6400T,” says McKellar.
“I’m basically a good old boy who got
myself to a point where I could buy $5
million worth of equipment. I want to
take my company into the more secure
niche of grinding and chipping, with the
biggest, best, most dependable, versatile
equipment there is.
“To leave something for my kids,” he
concludes. “I’m trying to figure out how
to pass it on, and give some of my family
a better life when I’m gone. That’s what
motivates me.”
Continental Biomass Industries
Site Prep
World’s Best Portable and Stationary
Biomass Recovery Systems
www.cbi-inc.com
CBI machines are custom-built to outproduce, outperform and outlast all others.
Stuck on CBI
“CBIs are built so you can replace all
the wear parts. Everything on it can be
replaced. I’ve owned a variety of other
brands over the last ten years. I don’t
believe the engineers who built them
spent one day in the woods repairing a
machine. It’s a major job. Downtime is a
‘killer’ in the woods.
“When I bought my 6400T, in the fall
of 2014, I had about $6 million worth
of other equipment, I immediately sold
myself down to $2.5 million, five pieces
of equipment total, and I have not lost
a dime. I went from about $95,000 per
month in notes payable, down to $35,000
per month. I take immaculate good care
of my equipment, so I was able to get
top dollar for specialty pieces that I sold,
including mulchers, a pair of older horizontal grinders, two chippers and tracked
cut-down saws, things like that which
we were using to clear right of ways –
because my new CBI grinder can do the
work of all of those machines.
“Hands down, my CBI will outperform
any grinder there is, apples to apples,
by 25 percent, and probably give you at
least a 20 percent less cost to put tonnage
on the ground in a chipping or grinding
situation.
“I didn’t buy this machine to be only a
grinder. I can actually use it to clear right
of ways. CBI custom-built me a 1,000
horsepower machine with a D6XL undercarriage, with 24 inches of ground clearance, three extra rollers for distribution
of the weight, a set of 32-inch double-bar
severe-duty Grouser tracks on it – and it
CBI Magnum Force 6400T
with 4-Pocket Microchip Rotor
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Twenty 6" x 8" striker plates 3" thick, with twenty-four Two rows of knives for Four rows of knives for chip
held in place by two 1-1/4" weld-on Replace-A-Face™ average chip lengths of 3/4" lengths of 1/16" to 1/2" (2
bolts, designed specifically hammers with reversible to 2" to produce fuel chips mm to 12 mm) to produce
hort chips suitable for
for contaminated demolition tips for forestry debris and from stem wood.
Visit www.cbi-inc.com
to learn more about our qualityspelletizing
products.
mulch manufacturing.
or pulverized fuel
debris, RR ties, and MSW.
from stem wood.
• Portable, track or stationary
• Metal Release System protects rotor, anvil
• High production (up to 200 tons per hour)
• Pre-screen belly conveyor for by-pass of
and screens
• Choice of three CAT engines up to 1125 HP,
or electric drive
abrasive fines
• Split hog box with a clamshell opening for
ease of maintenance
Continental Biomass Industries, Inc. • 22 Whittier Street, Newton, NH 03858 USA • (603) 382-0556 • www.cbi-inc.com
Recycling Product News January/February 2015 19