A crew from Gerke Excavating, Inc. used the LT1213S to crush the old surface on a portion of Highway 33, part of a State of Wisconsin roadway replacement project. Gerke Excavating, a family-owned company based in Tomah, Wisconsin, is a major player in the construction industry in west-central Wisconsin. The company provides a wide range of services, from site development and sewer work to aggregates production and frac-sand mining.
Wisconsin specifications require Gerke Excavating to produce 5" x 1¼" recycled concrete aggregate, which they use to fill soft spots in the road, using the 1¼" aggregate for top cover.
Gerke Excavating initially started the crushing process with another manufacturer’s tracked crusher, but found the production capacity was not acceptable. “We were falling way behind on our schedule. The other crusher just couldn’t keep up,” explains Greg Mick, Gerke Excavating’s foreman on site.
Crushing process finished two weeks early
Needing a different approach, Gerke Excavating contacted RB Scott Company, Metso’s crushing and screening distributor in the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Bruce Troxel, District Manager at RB Scott, has called on Gerke Excavating for a number of years and knows the company well.
Fortunately, RB Scott Company’s President, John Mickelson, had recently decided to purchase a new LT1213S unit for stock. Mickelson, Troxel and the entire service team at RB Scott worked in close cooperation with Metso Distributor Manager Floyd Gast. “Because RB Scott had the LT1213S as a stock unit, we were able to respond quickly to Gerke Excavating’s request and rent the unit to them,” says Troxel. “They called on Monday, picked it up on Tuesday, and started crushing on Wednesday.”
“Once we got the new Metso LT1213S on site, we quickly caught up and got ahead of schedule,” says Mick. Gerke Excavating ran two 11-hour shifts each day and reported that the LT1213S never missed a beat. “We are consistently feeding it load after load and it’s not even running hard,” said Mick. “I love this unit,” he added, “and it’s our job to keep up with it clearing and moving the piles as we move up the road.”
As a result of the LT1213S impact crusher’s performance, Gerke Excavating finished up the crushing process for the highway project two weeks early.
Chad Gerke, Construction Supervisor for Gerke Excavating, was so pleased with the performance of the rented LT1213S on the Highway 33 project that he subsequently bought the unit. This LT1213S will next be used at the company’s limestone quarry to make ¾" minus product.