Goolwa Quarries Pty Ltd is a family-run business operating two quarries in South Australia: one at Currency Creek and another located at Hartley.
The company supplies an extensive range of high-quality quarry products to the building, construction and road building industries including aggregates, screenings, crushed rocks and sands. The company handles its own deliveries through operating a modern fleet of truck and dog trailers.
Limestone is the key base material used for country road building in South Australia and the product that was causing Goolwa’s Maintenance Manager, Ash Gibson, some issues.
“Due to its composition limestone gets particularly sticky especially when wet and as a consequence gets hung up in the trailer and becomes difficult to unload. The material doesn’t always flow smoothly often resulting in a single large load discharge which causes an uneven spreading depth. This in turn means more time and effort is spent smoothing this out,” Ash said.
“Often the only way to empty the tray was to increase the tipper elevation angle even higher and shunt back and forth, putting more wear and tear on the truck and trailer and ultimately affecting their longevity,” he added.
Any remaining residual that was left in the tray was brought back to the quarry and required to be manually emptied and cleaned – a time consuming, unproductive and obviously unpopular activity which drivers had to carry out.
The solution to Ash’s issue came via a proactive colleague who was always on the lookout for ways to boost productivity and safety. He had carefully researched the market and available products and concluded that Enmin’s Flow-Easy truck vibrators were the answer.
Flow-Easy vibrators are distributed by Melbourne based Enmin, an Australian market leader in the areas of materials handling systems and vibratory equipment. The vibrators were previously marketed under the Enmin brand but were recently re-branded to Flow-Easy.
The Flow-Easy range includes 12- and 24-volt electric vibrators along with hydraulic and pneumatically powered options. Some transport applications require vibration to be applied for an extended amount of time, a scenario where the design characteristics of the hydraulic and pneumatic models come into their own. If required, they can be run continuously, rather than the more generally utilised intermittent operation of the electric models.
Ash put the proposal to management and approval was obtained to trial one of the electric units which was delivered in early August this year.
Once delivered, the vibrator was put through something akin to a trial by fire. Ash deliberately looked for the wettest, most sticky limestone he could find and loaded it into the trailer. He and his driver then did a series of experiments in the quarry’s own driveway.
“The result was incredible. With the vibrator turned on the material exited the tray quickly in a safe, smooth and controlled discharge; the tray was completely emptied with no residual at all.
We kept lowering the elevation height and it still worked superbly; tipping at a lower elevation height is always welcome as it minimises the risk of roll-over,” Ash went on to say.
The great results were replicated on actual job sites and as a result the company has just ordered six more with more purchases likely in the future.
“The Flow-Easy vibrator has worked even better than we anticipated – it’s far exceeded our expectations. Considering the relatively low purchase cost, the ROI takes no time at all. I’d certainly recommend them to anyone who’s experiencing similar tipping problems,” Ash concluded.