English
Push, pick, dump … repeat
Spring 2013
Inside the main processing building at the Harley Hollan Companies transfer station in Tulsa, Okla., trash moves through a maze of sorting and picking stations on 18 different belts.
Outside on a paved unloading area, the size of a football field, 150 or more trucks per day dump the contents from roll-off and front-load containers. Contractors and homeowners deposit their waste as well.
Keeping up with the material on the ground outside — 1,800 to 2,600 cubic yards per day — and making sure the conveyor system on the inside is working efficiently is quite a challenge, requiring a coordinated system and the right combination of equipment.
"As the amount of waste brought into our facility increased, we needed to find machines that could keep up with the volume. After evaluating several options, a pair of Doosan products — a DL250 wheel loader and DX140LCR crawler excavator — turned out to be the best choice for price and durability," says Kevin Hefley, general manager. "They have worked out well."
Efficient waste handling
Both machines, purchased from H&E Equipment Services, the Doosan dealer in Tulsa, work outside the open-front building handling the waste brought in from thousands of roll-off containers (7 to 40 yards) and 600 front-load containers (2 to 8 yards), owned by Harley Hollan Companies, plus whatever the public drops off.
The DL250, equipped with a 3.5-yard bucket, pushes all the material into a pile in front of the main picking area. At that point the DX140LCR takes over. The fast cycling machine picks up the trash and dumps it onto the main feed line that takes it into the building. Items that cannot be recycled, such as insulation, are picked off and piled to the side by the excavator.
"The wheel loader has to keep moving the material into the pile so there is space for more to be brought in," Hefley says. "And the excavator has to continuously fill the conveyor belt that keeps 30 people working inside the building. We need both machines to perform reliably throughout the day, and they do."
He gives the DL250 a superior rating for power, operating controls and visibility. The DX140LCR is really good on fuel and very smooth to operate, he says. Service and responsiveness of the dealer has been great as well, according to Hefley.
Recycling efforts
Founded by owner Harley Hollan in 1998, the company has been hauling waste from day one. Today, one of the company's goals is to promote recycling and other green initiatives. About 78 percent of the waste material brought to the facility is recycled. The remainder goes to a landfill.
"We are searching every day for new outlets for the items currently going to the landfill," Hefley says. "We want to reduce that 22 percent down to as little as we can, zero if possible. In fact, when Harley started the business, recycling was a high priority. Early on, everything was sorted by hand. Now much of the work is mechanized."
Once the material enters the two-story building, it goes across a shaker system that removes dirt, then onto a series of picking lines where, in one case, anything 8 inches or smaller drops through to a belt that takes it to a picking area where items 2 inches or smaller fall onto another belt.
At the end of the process, individual buyers of the recycled material haul away their items while some of the 18 Harley Hollan trucks transport the remainder to the landfill. The company grinds up some of the wood waste and sells it as mulch, while other wood is sold to firms to produce compost.
