In the Mix

Since 1979 a crushing operation has been recycling concrete on Midway Court in Elk Grove Village, a Chicago suburb near O’Hare International Airport. For most of that time it was run by R.I. Busse Inc., a pioneering company in concrete recycling.

But, about four years ago Vulcan Materials Co., the national construction materials corporation based in Birmingham, Ala., bought the business and some smaller entities in the Chicago area in order to enter the Midwestern recycling market.

This entry was all part of Vulcan’s strategy to be a full- line supplier of construction materials in the Chicago area, according to Rob Vogel, president of the company’s Midwest Division, a CMRA member. "Recycled concrete is a construction material," he says. "We are in the construction materials business. For us to ignore it would have been ignoring a part of our business."

Vogel adds that when it is economically feasible, recycling has a natural synergy with the other operations of an aggregate producing company. The big catch is that feasibility, he says. "It depends on the market area, and each area is different."

Vogel’s comments echo those of Mac Badgett, senior vice president of Vulcan’s Construction Materials Division. In an interview in the Sept./Oct. 2002 issue of C&D Recycler, Badgett said, "We will continue to analyze marketplace by marketplace whether to recycle. We will do recycling where it seems to make economic sense for us."

It does seem to make sense in the Chicago area, says Vogel. "Each year the market share of recycled aggregate continues to grow, relative to natural aggregate." The company already has a large natural aggregate presence there and the attendant large sales force out beating the bushes.

Recycling, being relatively the same operational activity as aggregate production, imparts economies of scale to the operation. It means Vulcan can pull equipment from the recycling stable to help a quarry meet added production goals, as needed. And the company is able to combine recycled product sales with natural aggregates in order to provide customers a one-stop shopping solution.

However, there is more competition in the recycling market, Vogel adds. "The barriers to entry are pretty low for recycling," he says. "Somebody can get into it if they want to. But a natural aggregates producer has to jump hurdles that a recycler does not have to.

"Also," Vogel continues, "a big difference is that the full-line producer [offers] a full product line. The customer holds you to that same level of quality across the board." Recyclers can hit niche markets where the quality level may not be as strictly monitored.

Vogel admits that Vulcan’s Midwest Division needed help when it entered the recycling market in the form of expertise in crushing concrete. "There is always a learning curve" to any new business, he says, and recycling was no different. "We did not bring quarry techniques to recycling. We bought recycling techniques." Those techniques came with the purchase of R.I. Busse. "We brought in the expertise from the outside rather than try to learn it along the way," Vogel says. "Of course, we have developed some knowledge ourselves along the way."

Much of that outside knowledge came in the form of Carl Busse, a second-generation concrete recycler who currently is manager of the division’s recycling operations.

Busse manages six crushing spreads located throughout northern Illinois. Four of the plants are stationary, two portable. There used to be more portable plants, Busse says, but that market has changed quite a bit over the years. The track-mounted machines have an easier permitting process in Illinois, making them more cost effective on the small, on-site jobs. In addition, many of the demolition contractors have bought their own crushers for their jobs.

The Elk Grove Village plant that is the center of the Midwest’s Division’s recycling operation is, as mentioned, the long-time site of concrete recycling. Many in the industry have toured it and know the plant. Of course, it has undergone extensive renovation and change during the years, including many changes since Vulcan took it over.

The process starts out with a Dresser loader with an 8-yard-bucket feeding a 3062 Lippman jaw crusher (serial number 2) with a 6-foot by 16-foot vibrating grizzly feeder. Next in the sequence is a conveyor to a Hazemag 6552 impactor, with a 6-foot by 20-foot Lippmann double-deck screen and Dings magnet between these two plants.

This set-up, or slight variations thereof, has been in place for many years. What is new is that after the Hazemag is a tertiary crusher, a Nordberg (now Metso) HP300 cone and 6-foot by 20-foot triple-deck screen. Only three people are needed to run the plant: a loader operator, an operator in the excavator at the infeed to break up oversize pieces with a hammer and a "floater" who cleans up with a Case skid-steer.

The entire operation is on 4-1/2 acres, and that includes room for an office building and a scale trailer.

A major revision took place four years ago when Busse oversaw a reconfiguration of the site’s traffic flow. Before, there was a lot of two-way traffic and not much room to conduct operations. Now there are no trucks crossing paths, says Busse. Most of the traffic is on the perimeter of the plant and operations on the inside. "It is similar to how the quarries work," says Busse. "They have two-way traffic, and we have only one-way. But we can get more trucks in and out now."

The use of three-stage crushing systems at stationary plants is something Busse expects to grow in coming years. He cites several reasons as to why this third unit was put in. Of course, production rates can go up, he notes, but it also provides a better product, and the ability to produce several products, rather than just road base. Currently Vulcan is making four products out of recycled concrete: a 3-inch by 1-inch base stone, clean stone and 1-inch clean stone. The option is there to make other products if needed, says Busse.

Another change to the operation since Vulcan took over was the "tightening down" of the plant. Heavy rubber skirts are at all crusher exit points, and water is used freely for dust control. The result is virtually no dust created and a much quieter plant.

The access road to the plant was another point of improvement. This short piece of public pavement to a busy main artery (that the site has shared with other businesses) had always been difficult to keep clean over the years because of the heavy truck traffic on the mostly mud site.

After the purchase, Vulcan had the road repaved, making it smooth and easy to sweep. "With all those little ridges in it, the road was hard to keep clean," says Busse. "Dirt gets into the those little holes, then water, and it splashes everything out." Now the road is swept and maintained constantly and is a lot cleaner than it used to be. It also helps that much of the site has been paved with concrete.

Taking a page from the aggregate industry’s efforts to clean up its image, Vulcan also approved the upgrading of the site’s appearance, paying for landscaping along the front wall of the plant. It’s a small move, but one that plays well with the neighbors and improves the image of the industry and the company.

This concern for the environmental impact of crushing is part of Vulcan’s corporate culture, says Vogel, the division president. "We try to exceed what is expected, and that carries through to our recycling yards," he says.

He will admit it does add to overhead, but adds, "It’s just the cost of doing business. Vulcan would not have it any other way."

The author is associate publisher of Construction & Demolition Recycling and can be contacted at turley@cdrecycling.org.