Building the machine to fit the yard

With four recycling yards and a transportation fleet to operate, making sound equipment decisions is a big part of the job for OmniSource Corp’s Southeast Regional Manager Mike Winkler. Luckily, when the scrap handler at his shredding facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina came due for an upgrade, he had no trouble getting advice he could trust.  

Winkler found Scott Gibble, the northern Indiana Division Manager in OmniSource’s Midwest region. In 2010, Gibble took delivery of a new 840 M green machine, a new model that Sennebogen developed specifically to suit his requirements. Since then, the company has delivered several 840 M scrap handlers to OmniSource sites in the Midwest.    

The 840 M was highly recommended by Gibble, and it also had the endorsement of the company’s VP of ferrous operations, Bob Brewer. Brewer worked closely with factory representatives, as well as his distributor, while the specifications for the 840 M were developed. But Winkler’s choice was not automatic.  

“We do like to standardize when we can,” Winkler said. “Scott told me this was a reliable, efficient machine. Our own purchase decision though, was simply based on the operating cost that the machine demonstrated at the Midwest plants.”  

Winkler conducted his own due-diligence before placing his order with ASC Construction Equipment, the Sennebogen dealer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was already familiar with the staff at ASC, who supply the Volvo loaders used at his sites, and was impressed with the low fuel and maintenance costs reported by the Midwest facilities. Then he paid a personal visit to the head office of Sennebogen LLC, located in a new 54,000 square-foot facility outside of Charlotte.  

“We have our own mechanics to service the equipment,” Winkler explained, “but parts availability was big time for us. And this parts facility just blew us away.” The visit also gave Winkler a chance to get personal with the 123,000- pound 840M. “We all got a chance to get in it and run it while we were there. It was very impressive.”   

Evaluation in progress
OmniSource’s Spartanburg yard now has its first Sennebogen scrap handler on site. Winkler is continuing to collect data and assess his new acquisition as he puts the 840 M through its paces in varied loading operations. To begin, he assigned the machine to feed his Metso 98104 shredder.  

“It’s in a stationary application while it feeds the shredder, but I’m rotating operators through it to get different opinions on how it handles,” he reported. “The feedback so far has been all positive.”

After a few weeks, Winkler’s plan was to try it out loading trucks. According to Winkler, the rubber-tired 840 M provides excellent mobility on the paved Spartanburg yard. With a hydraulic elevating cab, he notes, the visibility it allows has earned accolades from his operators. The loading height to the Metso shredder’s conveyor is about 14 feet, while the cab can raise the operator to a seated eye level of 19 feet, providing a clear view of the target and the surrounding area.   

“We expect this machine will be a lot easier to move around than others we have had,” Winkler says. “The rubber tires will run faster on the concrete and cause less damage.”  

The Spartanburg shredder facility receives material from other feeder sites OmniSource operates in the region. To keep the heavy-duty Metso shredder operating at capacity, the 840 M is fitted with a two-yard scrap grapple. Winkler anticipates that he will add a smaller grapple to his attachment inventory for loading trucks, as well as a clean-up magnet to sweep the yard.  

According to Scott Gibble, the 840 M evolved through very specific requirements OmniSource set down to match the processing equipment in use at its various facilities.   

“What initially attracted us to Sennebogen was that we had a special need for a rubber-tired material handler of a particular size,” says Gibble. “When we were spec’ing machines, the 840 M series wasn’t even in [their] product line yet. We tried the 835 M and it was too small for our needs; we tried the 850 M and it was too big.”  

OmniSource also had clear ideas on the kind of performance their business required: a machine that would be a little quicker and more mobile than existing units, and that could handle attachments in a specified size range. That’s when Tim Kreider of Brandeis Machinery & Supply, the Sennebogen dealer in Indiana and Kentucky, went the extra mile to get the OmniSource business.   

“The dialogue between our company and Sennebogen was largely driven by Tim,” says Gibble. “Brandeis deserves a lot of credit for listening to what we needed for our application and then bringing the manufacturer and product to us.” Constantino Lannes, President of Sennebogen LLC, became involved with his customer at that point as well. 

“The new machine was specially created to serve the increased demands of high performance operations like OmniSource,” he said. “Our engineers took the best features of the 835 M and 850 M models and created the new 840 M – its specifications and performance is a direct response to customer requirements.”

“It has proven to be a very good performer,” said Bob Brewer. “It’s a fast machine with ample reach and great cycle times that can drive the attachments in our application. It’s also a very stable machine with a low centre of gravity and a wide stance.”

OmniSource facilities in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio are already standardizing on the 840 M, and now Mike Winkler is leading the Southeast Region to the machines, custom-built to their applications.  With their Sennebogen fleet expanding, Brewer notes again that the after-purchase service support always figures prominently in OmniSource management’s equipment decisions. 

As he says, “It doesn’t help our uptime or bottom-line if we have to wait for someone to drive three or four hours to service our equipment. Good distributor support in the states where the machines are going is a major factor in going with the Sennebogen product line. Since we acquired our 840 M units, our distributors have done a great job supporting us in a timely manner.”