Concrete Products covers the issues that attract producers of ready mixed and manufactured concrete focusing on equipment and material technology, market development and management topics.
Issue link: http://concrete.epubxp.com/i/82325
FEATURE PRECAST/PRESTRESSED Fast Lanes ELM MOTT Texas Concrete Partners tools twin mixer batch plant to pace prestressed girder line demands By Don Marsh It's hard to picture a state with a better combination of transportation construc- tion market drivers. Aside from a strong business climate and an economy that has seen an unemployment rate consistently below the national average, Texas has in- credible land mass; sound planning and permitting policy; and, limited-access highway design using frontage road en- trances and overpasses to minimize high- volume intersections. If those aren't enough, new highway ca- pacity requirements in Dallas, Houston and the capitol region are being met with toll road development, independent of federal dollars, while the Lone Star State stays on track to add 10 million residents by 2030. Assessing production capabilities against near- and long-term demand, one of Texas' major bridge girder players has completed a batch plant upgrade to eliminate mix de- livery delays and cover additional straight- line bed space. "Our bridge market is hot and the outlook strong. When we saw the limitations of our existing batch equipment for current and future needs, something had to give," says Harvey Smith, president of Texas Concrete Partners, L.P., serving the state's north and south markets from Elm Mott and Victoria plants. Located near Waco, the former yard is strategic to the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro- plex, where Texas Department of Trans- portation work and private toll road development fuel strong bridge product demand. The Elm Mott operation entered summer 2012 with a new, twin-lane batch plant to feed 4-yd. hopper delivery trucks. In planning discussions with St. 30 | SEPTEMBER 2012 Harvey Smith joined Texas Concrete as Elm Mott office manager in 1973, three years after the plant opened. As part of a lean staff, he assumed transportation and pro- duction duties, along with office respon- sibilities, and was named vice president in 1990 and president in 2010. Hedwig, Texas, dealer Concrete Plant Restoration, "The idea was to have a small footprint plant with as few moving parts as possible, using gravity to move mate- rial," Smith notes. "We needed two lanes and more aggregate and cement storage than we had with an existing single-mixer plant, where output was slow and drivers might wait up to five minutes to load." Concrete Plant Restoration delivered a Merts EZCaster, with twin weigh belts di- rectly feeding separate aggregate holding hoppers, plus cement silos dedicated to each of two mixer lanes. Texas Concrete opted for one new mixer, a Simem 4-yd. twin shaft, and will install a similar exist- ing model in the new plant's second lane. With a solid, decade-long track record for concrete quality, the existing mixer has continued to operate—in tandem with the new equipment—from the original plant. LAND LOCKED Contractors on TexDOT work and public or private toll roads are very demanding schedule wise. Texas Concrete and com- petitors need to store much product for jobs that are typically let with short lead times, but can often end up shipping well past initial targets. Adding to storage space demands, agencies have mostly transitioned in the past three years from legacy Texas Type C and AASHTO Type IV prestressed girders, with 22- and 26-in. bases, to new bulb tees with 36- and 42- in. top flanges and TX (inch depth) des- ignation. The wider members consume proportionately more yard acreage. The bulk of Elm Mott product is TX54 or TX62 girders, although the plant is equipped for the bulb tees in the 28- to 70-in. range, plus U-shaped and deck slab members—the latter geared to rural, short-span structures. With 100 acres located along the state's major north-south artery, Interstate 35, Texas Concrete has room to expand casting bed and storage footprint, but not the batch plant and aggregate stockpile area. It abuts a small lake on the site's southwest corner and service route paralleling I-35. Continued on page 32 WWW.CONCRETEPRODUCTS.COM VICTORIA