When Kimball Sand Company decided to buy a new conveyor, they chose the longest telescoping conveyor they could find.

The Superior TeleStacker, purchased from Whitney and Son, extends 190 ft. (58 m) This makes it the largest road-portable, telescoping conveyor on the market, according to the manufacturer. The Superior Telestacker TSSA 36 in. by 190 f. (.9 m by 58 m) is rated at 500 tons per hour (453 TPH).

The equipment saves Kimball a lot of money — and fuel.

“[We] were running two 7.5 yd. loaders every day the plant was operating. Each loader was accumulating approximately 2,000 hours of use each year,” said Scott Kimball, plant supervisor of Kimball Sand Company, which is based in Blackstone, Mass. “With that amount of use [we] were replacing the loaders approximately every five years.”

Each loader had a value in excess of $300,000, and Kimball estimated that, factoring in depreciation and fuel costs, each loader was costing $120,000 or more per year to operate.

“[We] now use the loaders half as much as [we] used to, which reflects a 50 percent savings in fuel consumption, operator time, and equipment wear and tear,” Kimball said.

Kimball also said the conveyors help them separate materials. Stationary conveyors put everything in the same stockpile. The Superior TeleStacker conveyors can be programmed to move slowly and constantly to make partially desegregated piles.

The TeleStacker conveyors have a range of arc up to 270 degrees, allowing Kimball to stockpile several different sized products, partially desegregated, in kidney-shaped piles, which hold more product.

Starting new stockpiles also is easier with the TeleStacker system, according to Kimball.

“When we had a fixed conveying system, setting up a new stockpile could take as much as a week,” Kimball said. “With the Superior TeleStacker system, it can be achieved in minutes.”

Kimball’s quarries crush stone and other material from the ground and sell it as sand, gravel, rip rap, screened loam, recycled asphalt, stone and salt/sand mix.

It’s a business they’ve had for more than 20 years. Kimball was founded in 1968, when Robert Kimball started trucking aggregate materials. In 1979, Robert Kimball purchased his first piece of land, which has now grown to 600 acres (243 ha) in Blackstone, Mass. He started a sand and gravel bank on the land. In 1985, they hit ledge rock in the gravel pit, and decided to transform the site into a quarry.

Kimball also takes recyclable material from area contractors, including clean asphalt and clean concrete as long as it does not contain wire mesh or rebar. Kimball uses this material to produce a recycled asphalt product for resale.

For more information, call 978/343-6353 or visit www.whitneyandson.com.

This story also appears on Aggregate Equipment Guide.

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