Aggregate operations depend heavily on their equipment to get the job done. Earthmovers and loaders, crushers, screens, conveyors, and more are essential for quarrying, producing, grading, finishing, and utilizing aggregates.
Because the industry relies so heavily on its equipment, it’s hard to overstate how important it is to choose the right equipment for your operations. Here’s how the right aggregate equipment will make a difference in your operation.
Feasibility
The first thing to consider is whether a particular piece of aggregate equipment can even do what you will be asking of it. If the equipment won’t do what you need it to do, your operation is doomed from the start.
It’s important to remember that brochures, manuals, and spec sheets are written by sales professionals and engineers, not necessarily by people who have actually used a piece of equipment in the field. When you are choosing a piece of aggregate equipment, it’s important to talk to someone who has used it in the field or seen how it performs. Then you can make your decision based on real-world performance, not drawing-board specs.
Efficiency
The right equipment will make your operation much more efficient. This means getting your job done faster and more effectively. You’ll benefit from lower costs for fuel and labor. You’ll be able to take on larger, more complicated jobs and still get home at the end of the workday without falling behind.
Efficiency is another place where you need to talk to someone who has seen the equipment used in the field. Brochures will often advertise a machine’s top theoretical speed and productivity, but in practice it might not work well at that setting or might not work for long. Long-term efficiency also depends on downtime, which is not something you will get an accurate estimate of in the brochures. Talking to an experienced professional who has used the aggregate equipment or seen it used can give you a better idea of the real-world efficiency of different equipment.
Flexibility
Some pieces of aggregate equipment are designed with a particular function in mind. They are so thoroughly designed for that function that they do an amazing job at it. It’s really the best choice for the function, hands down. If you do that all the time, then that’s the machine that you want.
However, if your aggregate operations tend to vary according to the season, opportunities, and/or construction trends, then you might benefit from selecting equipment that might not be as good at one thing, but can adapt more easily to numerous functions so that you don’t have to invest in multiple pieces of aggregate equipment.
Durability and Maintenance
Aggregate operations are hard on equipment. The hard, heavy materials, difficult operating conditions, and sometimes near-continuous operation can lead to equipment breakdowns which will disrupt your operations.
When breakdowns occur, it can be hard and expensive to get service for certain types of equipment. There might be limited service locations, a shortage of parts, and complicated processes required to access and fix certain parts of the machinery.
To avoid breakdowns and extend the lifetime of the equipment, many manufacturers have rigorous maintenance schedules. This can also disrupt your operations and carry a significant financial burden.
Someone who has worked with different types of aggregate equipment knows how they differ in terms of their durability and maintenance requirements. They can help you understand how your choice of equipment might affect you over the long term.
Profitability
Put all these aspects together and it adds up to one big thing: choosing the right aggregate equipment will affect your ability to perform aggregate operations and to make them profitable.
More efficient equipment will reduce your costs in labor hours, fuel expenditures, and more, while flexible equipment will help you tackle more and different types of operations to help you stay profitable when demand changes. More durable equipment can save you on the cost of repairs and replacement of equipment, though perhaps you might find one with lower overall maintenance costs to be more profitable in the short term.
Let Power Screening’s Experts Match You with the Best Equipment for Your Aggregate Operation
Since 1989, Power Screening has been the leading aggregate equipment dealer in the Rocky Mountain region. We have established long-term relationships with clients performing many different types of aggregate operations, and we have heard from them how well our equipment performs in the field. Since we also offer service, we’ve seen how things hold up under pressure, what types of failure they’re prone to, and understand the long-term operational costs of each piece of equipment. With our rental operations, we’ve seen which machines come back dirty and which ones come back broken.
Our experts can give you good advice on the equipment that will be best for your needs. We can help you decide if it makes more sense to rent or buy. We can help you understand when it’s best to buy new equipment and when used equipment is a better buy. You can ask our experts detailed questions, and if they don’t immediately have the answer, they will know where to get it.
With locations in Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico and a service area that includes Wyoming and parts of Idaho, Nebraska, and Kansas, Power Screening is a premier aggregate equipment dealer for the entire Rocky Mountain region. If you are looking for advice about finding the best piece of equipment for your aggregate operations, please contact Power Screening today.