Earlier this year, W.L. Hailey of Nashville, Tenn., was awarded a $12 million contract to build a new equalization basin and adjacent pumping station for Nashville’s Metro Water Services on the city’s east side.
The Barker Road EQ Basin is made up of a large, 200-ft. (61 m) diameter storage tank capable of holding 15 million gal. (57 million L) of sewage and storm water runoff. Connected to the tank is the 50- by 50-ft. (15 by 15 m) pumping station. W.L. Hailey started work on building both the tank foundation and pump station in early February and expects to finish by the end of the year. The pre-stressed storage tank is being constructed by the Crom Corporation who is a subcontractor to W. L. Hailey.
“Nashville has a lot of combined sewers, which means the sewage and the storm water run through common pipes, the same as in a lot of cities across the country,” W.L. Hailey Project Manager Ryan Gutridge explained.
“In wet weather events, the system tends to become overloaded, so by building a pump station around one of these existing combined sewer lines, Metro Water will be able to turn on the station during a storm and pump 15 million gallons out of the system into the storage tank until the rain stops. Once the sewer plant is able to catch up and everything goes back to normal, it will slowly release that combined sewage back into the system.”
As project coordinators within W.L. Hailey evaluated the project, they realized the company would need something bigger than the 80- and 110-ton (72.6 and 99.8 t) cranes it normally uses.
“When we plan a job like this, one of the first things we have to do is figure out what the heaviest picks are going to be and what the radius is from the center point of the crane,” explained Gutridge. “That will determine the size crane you need. When we did that analysis, we could see that we needed something between a 150-ton and a 165-ton rig.”
W.L. Hailey Equipment Manager Dennis Petty contacted Stafford’s Atlanta branch and the company leased a new Terex American HC 165 lattice boom crawler crane at what Gutridge described as “an attractive lease rate.” Stafford, headquartered in Tifton, Ga., is the authorized Terex full line crane distributor for Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
“We’ve had really good luck with Terexes in the past so it was really a no-brainer to use this rig,” Gutridge said.
He added that the Terex-American HC 165 crane it is leasing for this project is being asked to do a number of different tasks.
For instance, the crane is helping to install a shoring system around the excavation of the 40-ft. (12 m) deep hole for the pump station.
“We are doing that inside of a cofferdam, where we have got large steel boxes that we fly into the hole using the Terex,” Gutridge said. “There, a mini excavator loads the boxes up with dirt before the crane flies it out of the hole and dumps it up topside so it can be hauled off.”
The HC 165 crane also will be used to move all of the material necessary to construct the pump station back into the hole, including the rebar, concrete, piping and permanent pumps.
“We have been really happy with this rig,” Gutridge said. “For what we are doing, it is the perfect size. You can spend a bunch of money and go with a crane that is oversized when you don’t really need it, but for what we do it’s the perfect size for the right money. Plus, it doesn’t take up a large footprint, which is important because we are working at a fairly compact site.”
Ray Guinn, crane operator of W.L. Hailey, also is pleased with the HC 165 crane, saying that it is “one of the best cranes I’ve ever operated” and that it outperforms some of the larger cranes he has used over the years.
Gutridge and Petty both said that the reliability of Terex-American cranes is one of the main reasons that they wanted to use the HC 165.
To illustrate the point, Petty said that the construction company already owns two HC 80s, both from 1999. One has racked up 27,000 hours of use and the other 15,000 hours. All Petty has ever had to do to them is to make sure that they are serviced regularly.
Petty outsources all of the mechanical work that needs to be done to W.L. Hailey’s equipment, as the firm has equipment in use all over the South.
When he was asked what parts of the Terex-American cranes typically see breakdowns, his answer was succinct.
“That is why I use Terex: They don’t break down. They are just great machines.”
Gutridge added that using Terex-American cranes gives him one less headache each day.
“It is not something that we are concerned about or spending any time trying to repair,” he said. “It is great that I don’t have to think about the crane; it’s not something that I am spending any time worrying about.”
Like Terex-American, Stafford Equipment has taken all the worry out of W.L. Hailey’s equipment leasing.
Gutridge and Petty both said they prefer leasing from Stafford, because the company is “very responsive” to their needs and has always proven to be adept at getting replacement parts for any equipment that does break down.
About W.L. Hailey & Company Inc.
W.L. Hailey, too, has fashioned an excellent reputation for itself since its founding in 1925. Besides its main office in Nashville, the company also has a satellite location in Atlanta to better serve its growing number of Georgia contracts.
Gutridge said that the employee-owned firm works “in every state that touches Tennessee,” which represents 90 percent of its projects.
Its projects include building treatment plants and pump stations, digging tunnels, working on inland marine projects and installing streetscapes, as well as water and sewer lines. CEG
Eric Olson
A writer and contributing editor for CEG since 2008, Eric Olson has worked in the business for more than 40 years.
Olson grew up in the small town of Lenoir, NC in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he began covering sports for the local newspaper at age 18. He continued to do that for several other dailies in the area while in college at Appalachian State University. Following his graduation, he moved on to gain experience at two other publications before becoming a real estate and special features writer and editor at the Winston-Salem Journal for 10 years. Since 1999 he has worked as a corporate media liaison and freelance writer, in addition to his time at CEG.
He and his wife, Tara, have been married for 33 years and are the parents of two grown and successful daughters. His hobbies include collecting history books, watching his beloved Green Bay Packers and caring for his three dogs and one cat.
Read more from Eric Olson here.
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