Adding Value to Cherry’s Recycling Operation
July 26, 2022
This article was originally published in the November/December 2008 issue of DEMOLITION magazine.
The recipe for recycling demo debris is simple: Take one part dwindling landfill space, add a huge dash of increased regulation, toss in a pinch of steadily rising tipping fees, sweeten with decent markets for the recycled material, and sprinkle with a commitment to environmental awareness.
While the above recipe is obviously facetious, for Cherry Demolition, the ingredients are all too real. Faced with those very challenges, the Houston-based company took what it saw as the only sensible, prudent and financially sound action: It instituted a full-fledged recycling effort. Since doing so, then expanding it to a separate division within the company, Cherry has turned what was once a massive headache and drain on the bottom line into a profit center that’s outpacing demolition revenue itself.
Never comfortable with the status quo, the company has also enhanced its rebar recycling effort with the addition of a Genesis Rebar Shear. With that attachment in place, it has maximized the processing of the recovered rebar, is improving load densities headed to the mill and is generating a higher-value product. For Cherry, it’s definitely been a recipe for success.
All About Foresight
The story of Cherry Demolition’s growth from a house moving company started by Carl and Barbara Cherry in 1952 to one of the country’s premier demolition firms is legendary within the industry. What’s not so well known is how, almost a decade and a half ago, the company recognized the potential C&D debris recycling represented.
“This company has always had a sense of knowing the right thing to do both from an economic and environmental perspective,” says George Redumis, operations manager for Cherry’s Steel Recycling Division. “The Cherry brothers, John, Keith, Leonard and Rick, started recycling concrete pulled from their projects in 1995, even though the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) wouldn’t approve use of that material until a year later. They really have a handle on what will work and what won’t.”
In 1996, with TxDOT approving use of recycled concrete in state road projects, the company steadily began to grow its recycling effort to where it is today: operating three recycling yards in and around the Houston area, regularly taking portable crushing equipment to job sites for on-site crushing, and expanding their operations to include cement stabilization, asphalt recycling and a focus on recovering not just the concrete but the steel contained within.
“Cherry’s demo projects are broad ranging and can include road removals, implosions, commercial and residential structures, pulling up of pads and so on,” says Redumis. “Recycling the debris started out as a small idea, but it has resulted in a division within the company that takes in better than 1.3 million tons of material a year and recovers better than 95% of it. That’s pretty impressive, I’d say.”
Shearing the Bar
In those early days of the recycling operation, while emphasis was placed on the reuse of the concrete itself, markets were not yet fully established for the rebar contained within. When the stockpile of that bar became what owner Leonard Cherry felt was too large, he presented Redumis with a challenge.
“Leonard essentially came to me and said: ‘We have 15,000 tons of rebar and a weak steel market. Find us a way to move that material with a profit.’ I knew there were a couple ways to do that. First, by maximizing the tonnages in each container we sent to the mills, and second by giving the mills a higher-valued product. Both of those steps involved downsizing the rebar, so I started looking for a reliable rebar shear to process it to mill spec — 3 feet or less.”
From the outset, adds Redumis, they tried a number of shears from different manufacturers, but were not happy with the production, nor the durability they offered.
“This is a challenging application for a shear of almost any type,” he says. “Cutting through a pile of mangled rebar to get it to mill spec is tough on an attachment. A call from Johnny Breaux, Genesis Attachments’ regional manager for the area, however, introduced us to their rebar shear: the GRS 70, which we mounted on a Komatsu PC300. That was in 2004, and we’ve been using it ever since.”
Cutting Through the Mess
A look at Cherry’s concrete recycling operation as a whole offers a better understanding what an attachment like a rebar shear is up against on a daily basis. At the company’s 46-acre McCord recycling site, for example, concrete debris arriving from demo projects throughout the Houston area is offloaded and either downsized using a hydraulic hammer or concrete pulverizer, then fed to a crushing plant. Upon exiting the plant, debris is run past a suspended pulley magnet that pulls the steel and sends it to a pile below where it is moved by loader to a separate area for processing.
“By then, the bar that was once nice and straight in the concrete is now a twisted pile of steel,” says Redumis. “In order to increase densities in the boxes — or get the material to mill spec if the markets warrant it — we need to cut through that mess; that’s where the rebar shear proves its value.”
He adds that they used their first GRS 70 for better than four years (and still do) but recently added a newly designed model Genesis had just introduced as part of its Power Series attachments. The improvement, he says, has been immediate and significant.
“In our part of this business, time is production and production is dollars,” he says. “The new Power Series model offers us two improvements over the previous rebar shear: a more powerful cutting force and a faster cycle time between cuts. The added force now allows us to process 1.5-inch rebar where the previous model limited us to 1-inch bar. Just as importantly, the cycle times are about two seconds quicker due to design improvements inherent in the Power Series. Two seconds faster per cut may not seem like much, but if you take that added production and extend it outward to daily, weekly, monthly and yearly, it really adds up. We’ve probably gone from cutting three or four tons an hour to four or five tons an hour. It’s that significant.”
A Look at the 70
Designed to cut rebar into 16-inch lengths, the GRS 70 makes two sequential cuts each time the jaws close. Abrasion resistant, custom-alloy steel ensures the durability Cherry’s operation demands, while 10 identical cutting blades, each of which is four-way indexable, maximize blade life and utilization.
“Given the nature of our work, we strive to emphasize good maintenance routines on all our equipment,” says Redumis. “On the rebar shear, we turn the blades about every two weeks, so we use about one set of blades every two months. That’s about $1,500 in costs per month, very minimal in light of what it’s giving us in production. Maintenance on any shear is critical to its performance, but there’s no doubt we’ve needed less on this one than any other shear we own.”
Additional features Redumis cites include a design that allows the attachment to work in place of the excavator bucket, thereby eliminating the need for additional hydraulics; and a heavy-duty pivot group design that resists twisting shock loads, ensuring the tight blade tolerances required to cut rebar.
Getting Out of the Yard
While the rebar shear spends the overwhelming majority of its life at the recycling yard, Redumis says there are occasions when it, too, will take to the road.
“On small commercial demolitions, the window of opportunity is generally tight. We want to get in and out as quickly as possible, so we will bring the debris back to the yard. On larger projects, however, we sometimes have more options. At a petro-chemical plant, for example, we have to downsize the material just to remove it from the plant. If we are there for an extended period of time, we can hammer the slabs, footers, foundations, etc., free up the bar, and use the Genesis shear to cut it right there.”
Redumis adds that, as it is for most large demolition firms, for Cherry Demolition, the bottom line on any piece of equipment is, ultimately, the bottom line.
“Our owner, Leonard Cherry, is very cost-conscious and wants to see that a piece of equipment is worth the investment we make in it. What does it contribute to making the operation better, more efficient, safer, more productive, and so on. It think the new rebar shear has proven its worth on all counts.”