Keeping the pace

The construction industry eats various materials for breakfast. It chews them up, spits them out and then comes back for more. What’s left are the waste materials that either can end up in a landfill or can be sent to a recycling facility, such as Sun Recycling in West Palm Beach, Florida, operated by Southern Waste Systems (SWS), headquartered in Lantana, Florida.

Founded in 1999, SWS is an industry leader in the collection and processing of commercial and residential waste. As the largest privately owned recycler of construction and demolition material, yard waste, recovered materials and mixed waste in the southeastern United States, the company’s innovative recycling processes have been met with national acclaim. SWS’ goal is to turn the highly recyclable materials it collects into marketable products that can be put back into the economy instead of in a landfill.

Sun Recycling’s West Palm Beach facility operates on a 12-acre site. The facility takes material from third-party customers as well as from SWS. Rock crushers and wood grinders go to work, breaking down construction debris to their most basic and reusable forms. In processing wood, metal, concrete, cardboard and plastics, Sun Recycling has a recovery rate of up to 92 percent. The debris comes in on trucks, and then the Volvo equipment goes to work.
 

Working overtime

SWS owns 50 pieces of Volvo equipment, which clock about 2,000 operating hours each per year.

Paul Valenti is the director of facility operations at Sun Recycling. As he looks across the wide expanse of the main yard, dozens of these machines fill his view. When asked why his company has made such an investment in Volvo equipment, he answers with one word: uptime.

“One of the most important decisions for us in why we purchase Volvo equipment is uptime,” Valenti says. “The Volvo equipment will stand up to our heavy-duty cycle with the long hours, and at the end of the day that’s the name of the game. If there’s no equipment and no uptime, there’s no recycling,” he adds.

Sun Recycling’s rock crusher, a Volvo EC300D excavator equipped with a hydraulic pulverizer attachment, simultaneously moves and crushes rocks and concrete the size of motorcycles. In an environment like this, the Volvo Care Cab becomes more necessity than luxury, Valenti says. Mounted on viscous silicone rubber to absorb shocks and to provide comfort, the excavator’s operator’s cab is designed to be a safe environment, with filtration through 14 air vents, low noise and limited vibration. With features like a rear-view camera and a color I-ECU monitor, the interior is designed to provide comfort and safety, according to the equipment manufacturer.

More excavators are found at Sun Recycling’s wood grinding operation. These Volvo EC250DL excavators are equipped with three-over-two grapple attachments. The excavators lift piles of wood scrap and place the material into the grinder for processing. Excavator attachments are easily switched out depending upon the application and whether it requires a bucket, grapple, fork or other attachment.

Throughout the Sun Recycling facility, a series of Volvo L220 and L250 wheel loaders move tons of recyclable products through the recycling process, including materials such as rock and concrete, logs, wood waste, cardboard or plastics. These wheel loaders help Sun Recycling to keep production moving at peak performance, Valenti says.
 

Fueling efficiency

Equipped with OptiShift, the wheel loaders are designed to offer fuel efficiency and an enhanced operator experience. OptiShift is a feature offered by Volvo Construction Equipment, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, that is designed to increase operator comfort and machine durability while optimizing fuel savings. Load-and-carry applications, such as those Sun Recycling engages in, can expect to realize a fuel savings of up to 15 percent over the competition, with some applications experiencing up to 30 percent better fuel efficiency, according to Volvo. OptiShift combines the company’s patented Reverse by Braking (RBB) system and a new torque converter with lock-up and free wheel stator. The result is shorter cycle times, durability and fuel efficiency, the equipment manufacturer says. OptiShift combined with CareTrack (the manufacturer’s telematics system that provides machine monitoring information) marry built-in fuel efficiency with the ability to track a machine’s performance and keep tabs on fuel usage.

“With the cost of fuel today, and the amount of hours that we put on the machines, fuel efficiency is extremely important,” Valenti says. “The CareTrack program allows us to monitor fuel consumption and the way the operator is operating the machine. If we see a machine that is burning too much fuel, we can address the operator and try to remedy the situation. We have done this over the last three to four years, and our fuel consumption across the board on all of our equipment has dropped somewhere in the range of a gallon and a half per hour. If I take that times 2,000 hours for 50 machines at $3.50 a gallon, that’s a substantial savings to the bottom line.”

Spending less on fuel helps add to Sun Recycling’s profit margin, Valenti says. And fueling less frequently means less downtime. As demand increases, that becomes more and more important.

With government regulations specifying higher recycling rates, Sun Recycling must be able to keep up with the increasing demands of contractors in the company’s operating area requiring a recycling facility for their scrap materials. Reliable machinery that performs at a consistently high level is necessary for Sun Recycling Systems to stay ahead of that demand.
 

Keeping up with demand

“As a trendsetter in the industry of recycling construction material, we realize it’s important that we have equipment that can keep up with the demands of uptime,” Valenti says. “Volvo has a key role in that uptime,” he adds.

Building a business around environmental sustainability and recycling and reusing construction debris is an admirable proposition; but, it is a business nonetheless. And, like other businesses, SWS and Sun Recycling rely on their equipment to perform their jobs consistently at a high level.

The article was submitted on behalf of Volvo Construction Equipment, based in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.