Test case

After commissioning a new 370,000-pound Sennebogen scrap handler at the Kinder Morgan Terminals barge facility at the Port of Charleston in South Carolina, the company was able to reduce its truck fleet use by 25 percent while still keeping pace with customers’ demand for material.

More quickly turning around Kinder Morgan’s fleet of 100-ton haulers and reducing the impact of rising fuel costs were the company’s main objectives when Stanley, North Carolina-based Sennebogen LLC approached Kinder Morgan with the concept of the new 880 R-HD material handler three years ago.

“We move between 1.5 [million] and 3.5 million tons of material out of port here every year,” says Terminal Manager Daryle Wall. “The volumes of our facilities in this area have provided us with experience using every kind of material handler, crane or excavator you can name. We were already looking for an alternative in 2007, when Sennebogen came to us with their idea for the largest electric drive scrap handler in the country. We saw that we had as good a location as you’d want for this type of machine, so we decided to work with Sennebogen on the project.”

Constantino Lannes, president of Sennebogen LLC, welcomed Wall’s interest in the project. “It took a leap of faith for Kinder Morgan to step up to the 880 R-HD,” he says, “but their application here and their experience with our equipment made them the ideal partner.

“Sennebogen led the adoption of electric drive material handlers in America,” Lannes continues. “No one had produced an electrically powered unit as large as this, so we needed a test bed to prove the engineering.”

The 880 R-HD would be a prototype, and it would take time to build and refine the new machine.

“We knew we were the guinea pigs,” Wall says. “We didn’t know if it would work, but we wanted to try because of the future savings, which, with the way fuel costs have gone up, turned out to be a pretty good decision,” he continues.

Since the new machine went into operation, diesel deliveries to Kinder Morgan’s Berkeley County terminal are down more than 20 percent, saving the facility significant costs on a monthly basis, according to Wall.
 

Smaller bites, better results

At Kinder Morgan’s Berkeley County operations in Huger, South Carolina, each of the company’s haul trucks carries up to 140 cubic yards per load from the dock to nearby stockpiles. At dockside, the unloading facility had been using rope cranes fitted with 22-yard grapples for quite some time.

At 10 yards, the grapple on the 880 R-HD machine is half the size of the rope cranes’ grapples, but it keeps the trucks cycling faster, with larger loads, according to Kinder Morgan.

“Our other cranes are big and run much slower for the job,” Wall explains. “They couldn’t accurately fill up the corners of the truck like you can with the smaller grapple. The trucks are moving more toward their capacity at 140 cubic yards than the 110 to 120 cubic yards we were getting.

“The 880 R-HD can also run two complete loading cycles per minute into the trucks against just one cycle with the old machine. The turnaround for our trucks is faster, so we’re unloading the barges faster and doing a better job for our customer,” Wall adds.

The crawler-mounted material handler simplifies the unloading operation further, Wall describes, by being able to traverse the length of the dock under its own power. A powered tether line allows the machine a 400-foot range of movement to position itself for unloading either of two barges at the dock. With this mobility, there’s no need to winch the barges into place under the crane, Kinder Morgan says.
 

Simpler operation

Along with the fuel savings, Wall says switching to an electric drive material handler saves Kinder Morgan additional operating costs.

“We don’t have to worry about oils, lubricants or engine rebuild costs,” he says.

“With a diesel engine, you have the possibility of overheating, which is completely eliminated with the electric motor,” Wall continues. “The electric motor is a much better solution, causing less downtime. Electric is simpler, much more reliable, much more accurate, so it eliminates overheating. And it’s quieter, so it’s even better for the operators.”

Wall says the elevating cab of the material handler also was a change his operators welcomed. “With the cab extended up and out, the operators are able to view the entire barge at once,” he says.

“We have operators asking to transfer down here for that job,” Wall says.
 

Commitment pays off

Having taken a risk to collaborate with Sennebogen to commission America’s first 880 R-HD, Wall says the new machine has more than met expectations for Kinder Morgan. “I can’t give enough credit to the Sennebogen service team, Jim Westlake and Bob Marean,” he says. “They worked through all the interesting challenges that came up along the way—there are no better guys out there.”

Wall continues, “Being so new, there weren’t a lot of mechanics anywhere trained on this [material handler], but [Sennebogen’s] and our dealer’s mechanics have been great about coming out and working alongside our mechanics. They’re continuing to stay in touch, monitor[ing] the machine’s use and servicing along with talking to our operators,” he says.

Wall adds of both companies involved, “We all committed to this project, and it has taken us out further than we ever dreamed.”

This article was submitted on behalf of Sennebogen LLC, based in Stanley, North Carolina.