JFC Industries, LLC - Open Top Unit Train Unloading 11,000 Ton unit trains of aggregate unloaded in 12 hours or less with 2 excavators www.jfcindustries.com
This is how I spent my Saturday today, only I was in a truck. We unloaded 100 cars in Avard Oklahoma started at 6 am, they turned me loose at 330pm. I was lucky though, I was the only bobtail ant the front excavator was done 5 cars faster.
Back in the day before we worried about time clock's and log books and on board recorders. We would haul asphalt all night Start at 6pm work till 6am. Then go work in the stone yard from 6-11am. Then another guy would finish out till 5pm, Refuel the truck and meet you and the asphalt plant and start the process all over again. 5 and often 6 days a week. Then the concern about hours of service started. So you would do your 12 hrs on asphalt and then had another guy come in and he would unload rail cars for 12 hrs. Either way, those trucks where working 24 hours a day a minimum of 6 days a week. It didn't matter if you got rained out, They'd just put 2 more excavators to work in the rail yard, Go get in line. There was times we'd get behind and they'd offer Sunday work. Half a day, Started at 12:30- 5:00 so you could go to church.
@@ralphaverill2001 11,000 tons in 11 hours with 2 (16 ton) machines does not satisfy you? Yes there are faster ways but sometimes it just doesn't make sense to invest in infrastructure for a non-permanent job/plant. Like for instance highway construction. To have invested 3-4M$ in a car dumper and conveyers and a locomotive plus personell only to abandon it a few years later would be foolish. And we tried the basket idea already.
@@jasonwhiteside2174 It satisfies me just fine. It isn't my money. And it won't matter to me when one of those excavators tips over onto one of those dump trucks, or gets hung up moving from one hopper car to another. If it's ok with your insurance company, it's ok with me. I've seen mobile rock crushing set-ups with any number of configurable gravel transport schemes, They move in, set up, operate for a few weeks or months, break down, and move on to another location. They could adapt to your operation and move with you. But it's your operation, do what you want.
From the looks of it, it seem like a small rail yard in a city. There is some site that need stone, a lot of it. Make sense to transload the stone using readily available machines than to built a temporary temp rail site for side or bottom dump rail cars.
How's your day? 1st day - Amazing, I learnt how to unload a couple of rail cars week later - I unloaded a hundred+ cars today 6 months later - I only unloaded 1 train
Unloading this way may seem inneficient but if they had this many hopper cars with doors on the bottom to unload product, I guarantee they would run into alot of door problems and malfunctioning which would force them to have service crews working to get the doors open and fixed at which time the unloading process would be slowed down. Bottom dump railcar doors also leak small particle product out of the doors when they get a little abused and small gaps are created around the door seals. It's possible for alot of product to leak out going down the rails with all the vibration that occurs in a train so companies have their reasons for why they do things a certain way.
Neat vid and view from up top. Looks pretty efficient for whatever project this was intended (those talking about how inefficient this is haven't really thought this through, much less planned or bid such transload facilities). I think I'd be bored to death either operating or driving that endless loop, though. lol Thanks for sharing this.
I do agree with you on the efficient part of it but either using a tipper with a conveyor or dump under the trains into a hopper would be way cheaper. They must not have a big area to work with so that's why this operation is set up like it is. Be different if those trucks getting loaded were taking all that rock to customers but their not and it's just getting stockpiled. Those trucks, depending on location, will fetch up to $150 an hour and at the end of the day that's alot of money for such a short haul. Plus it's not possible to get all the rock out unless you have a guy inside with a shovel trying to get it all out. True story
Gondolas are not efficient for aggregates as are hoppers.This method of transferring gravel from railcar to truck looks so 4th-world-ish. Hoppers with bottom hatches were invented for a reason: efficiency and speed.
These cars don’t dump out the bottom. Not every facility that receives these cars are set up to unload hoppers. They have no pit or conveyor systems. How else would you recommend that we unload these gondolas? Looks pretty efficient to me.
Rip rap in a hopper car?? Even base or sb-2 gets clogged in the pit. Most customers that utilize this service don't want to spend the bucks on the setup you speak of. Especially on temporary plants made just for one highway construction or major repave. It is a bit primitive but with 2 mid size excavators, 2 men, we put 12,000 tons in the pile in less than one 12 hour shift.
Samuel McCloud did you ever think that not every town or siding deserves the cost of constructing bottom dump conveyor systems? Maybe this was a one-time job that made sense to take one or two days to unload thousands and thousands of tons of rock one time and be done. Maybe a single view of this on RU-vid isn’t all it takes for you to make a definitive decision on how they are doing it wrong. Maybe, the ones paying for it have actually researched it and decided on the best and least expensive method.
Looks efficient to me. I'm a dump truck driver my question is, Is there a scale on the excavator, so the operator knows how much rock to put in the truck? And how do they get on and off the train? Cool video.
Those size of cars should be 120-140 ton. There probably loading 30-32 ton in each truck there in the yard. So figure it from there. The taller and longer cars will carry a bite more. But there not used very often on lime stone like this.
@@Pyle81 Thanks for the response I like seeing crushed rock or stone being loaded and handled, especially gravel and aggregate. Keep up the good work and keep posting.
Samuel McCloud that would require a considerable capital investment. These two excavators can do this in any yard where the sidings can be accessed easily. It’s actually pretty fast considering the alternatives.
No conveyor loader will beat the setup cost of an excavator nor the time cost of one person for a day to operate the excavator, versus what is capital tied up in a loader that only does one thing.
Why would anyone invest so much in something to serve what seems to be a temporary operation? These unloading sites aren't permanent or experience varying volumes based on the projects requiring the material, unlike something like a coal-fired power plant designed to operate for 30 years or more.
I want to know the same thing, I hope it’s not what I’m thinking. I’m hoping there is a ramp some where… But I’m almost certain they got up there by lifting the tracks up to an edge, turning around and using the boom to push them up while tracking in the necessary direction… just seems risky
I agree. I was on a cat 740b ADT for 8 months it was fun going through rough terrain even our haul roads were bad due to rainy conditions. But eventually it gets boring driving all day.
Anybody with experience, is there a ramp to get the excavator up there? Or are they doing it the old fashioned way of lifting the yracka and then using the boom?
Hello Jason Fleming, would it possible to contact you regarding one of your videos i.e via mail? I would love to discuss a permission to use it if this is possible. Greetings!
@@zipvork4414 I had one on demonstration a few years ago and yeah, it was slow. The dealership sent a fitter out to look at the pressures, he did some fiddling with it and it was Much quicker.
With trucks, its all on with rev-matching, you only use clutch coming off of 1st gear or in reverse, with my vid with the petetbilt that's how it is, can check it out
Would like to know how the jcb is mounted on top of the wagon. 2.can the wagon can with stand the weight of a jcb. 3. How the jcb can move from one wagon to another wagon. 4.what about the last wagon.. how it will be unloaded. 5.any intelligent person who has seen the video may explain in simple words. 25th November 2023.
We use a steel ramp that hooks on the end or the side of the railcar. Kinda sketchy but it works. Search on youtube for "whiteside excavation" and you will see both methods pop up. Gonna try to add them to this channel.
Have you never saw that video of a JCB or you call it a backo anyway it managed to get up there on its own with the help of amazing operator, maybe these got up with the help of a ramp away at the start, it's not as hard as you think but it's not for a starter for sure,these people know what they doing, plus moving to each one takes a lot of balls...
TheAudiostud It would be impossible to load trucks with a bucket that wide. You would have to swing around 90 degrees and be parallel with the truck. Also it wouldn’t get the corners of the cars clean since the boom is not exactly centered with the railcar.
Jerry Chance I should have made another pass. Did you know that the railroad will fine you if those cars are not clean? Plus it looks good to your customer to get every bit out that you can even though you spend an extra 30 seconds doing so. Waste of time? Those two machines are doing 1000 plus tons per hour. Is that not fast enough? What would you recommend?
@@tfi6279 The railroad doesn't own all of these cars in this video. The tan ones are privately owned. its part of the process, these cars were designed and built to withstand all the abuse that s thrown at them.
It's difficult hitting the trucks without spilling as they are at 72". You're talking about adding another 3ft to a machine that comes stock witha 24" bucket, lol. It would be messy plus more likely to break dogbones and stress the stick(more leverage for the bucket to break stuff).
This is a VERY SLOW PROCESS for Bulk unloading, IF THERE should be INFRASTRUCTURE ADVANCEMENT (which is possible) THEN IT CAN BE DONE WITHOUT USING PROCLAIN/EXCAVATOR and in Min. Amount of TIME.
One doesn't build a dedicated unloading infrastructure if the unloading site will only be used for a few months or years. This method works perfectly fine for short term operations.
