Newest Batch Plant Becomes Builder’s ’FirstSource’

Wed July 11, 2001
Giles Lambertson

The newest concrete batch plant in Johnston County, NC, is the product of a young building supply company and an older heavy equipment supply firm in the state.

Interstate Equipment Co. was founded 55 years ago in Statesville, NC. Formed just four years ago, was Builders FirstSource of Frederick, MD.

The common connection for the two firms is Bob Holland, an Interstate senior vice president, who has been with the company almost as long as it has been around.

Builders FirstSource has grown rapidly through acquisition of established building companies that supply everything from footing concrete to roofing shingles. It now is comprised of more than 80 distribution centers and 60 manufacturing facilities in 14 states.

Before July, the company had two North Carolina concrete plants — in Apex and Wake Forest. Now there are three, and the new facility near Benson is very much the work of Holland and FirstSource’s man in North Carolina, Bill Tatum.

The heart of the plant is a Vince Hagan Co. 12-yd. aggregate and cement batching facility. It was hauled on four trailers from Dallas, TX, to the 4.2-acre (1.7 ha) site just off Interstate 40.

The most imposing feature of the gray-painted plant is its 800-barrel storage silo that towers 64 ft. (19.5 m) above concrete mixer trucks that pull under it to be loaded. A conveyor and some steel framework connect the silo to an adjacent 140-ton (126 t) four-compartment overhead bin that feeds stone and sand to the silo for batching.

The bin, in turn, is fed from a hopper at the bottom end of another conveyor. That conveyor rides on four 10.00-20 tires that roll left and right to move it so the upper end can fill any of the selected compartments.

The plant is state-of-the-art in concrete batching. It typically functions like this:

Plant Manager Steve Hock sits inside the glass-walled operations center of the plant office in the shadow of the towering silo. Using one of two computers, Hock submits an order to the Frederick office of FirstSource and receives a ticket to commence batching.

The second computer controls the batching. Hock monitors the mixing visually via a camera hookup, as well as by watching a digital readout.

Stone already will have been loaded into the overhead bin using the company’s Kawasaki 60 Z IV, which has a 2.5-cu.-yd. (1.9 cu m) bucket. The loader also was supplied by Intestate.

To speed up the loading process, the operator of the Kawasaki never leaves his seat to roll the conveyor left or right as needed to fill the bin. Instead, he punches buttons on a remote control unit inside the loader, and electric motors roll it for him.

When a batch is complete, and a canvas shroud is lowered around the truck’s mixer opening to contain cement dust, Hock empties the mix of aggregate, sand and cement into the truck and a surge of water is added.

Any dust that escapes during the transfer is automatically vacuumed by a dust collector unit stationed next to the silo. The dust is circulated back to the top of the silo to the fly ash storage area.

“When the wind is blowing, it doesn’t collect it 100 percent, but it works real well,” Hock said of the dust collector.

This batching and loading process is repeated as truck after truck rolls up for loading. The plant’s operating capacity is in the general range of 200 cu. yds. (152 cu m) an hour, Holland noted.

“We’ve been very pleased with it,” said Clyde Baker, FirstSource sales manager at the plant. “We’ve done a little tweaking, but the service has been very good.”

Tatum, the FirstSource general manager of the three North Carolina plants, said that he, too, is satisfied with the Hagan plant, his first exposure to the Dallas manufacturer’s product.

He explained that he views the plant as part of “a long-term investment” by FirstSource as the company positions itself to expand in a region that has seen almost unrivaled growth in the last decade.

FirstSource has five mixer trucks stationed at the plant at the moment — three Oshkosh 11-cu.-yd. (8.4 cu m) rigs and two Mack 12-cu. yd. (9.2 cu m) units.

“As companies come to know we’re here,” in the new commercial park next to the interstate, said the plant manger, the cubic yards batched per hour will grow and the number of company trucks will increase to haul it.

But on a thoroughly rainy day in late April, the plant was essentially idle, taking a breather with a two-week string of sunny days forecast in the days ahead.

Dan Thorpe, driver of a bottom-unloading tank truck, was delivering 25 tons (22.5 t) of fly ash to be mixed with cement in the silo. His R.O. Harrell Inc. rig hauled the material from a North Roxboro plant.

Holland was there, too, visiting a plant he obviously takes pride in.

“I knew what I wanted,” he said of the facility.

The basic Hagan plant indeed has some Holland features that separate it from similar units. “It is,” he said, “a little bit unique.”

One of the differences is that it is served by a single source of Carolina Power and Light electricity. That is true even though the batch plant requires a 480-volt, three-phase system while the computerized operations center runs on a single-phase 110 system.

Holland resolved the disparity by linking breaker boxes and a transformer to step down the higher voltage electricity for use in the office.

“I do this all the time,” he said of the electrical innovation.

While he was at it, Holland situated several 110-volt outlet boxes on the framework of the batch plant for those occasions when someone will need to hook up a tool or a light. “I didn’t want anyone to have to string cords all over to do that work,” he said.

He also had affixed to the frame of the plant a 400-gal. (1,514 L) water tank connected to a metering pump. That system lets individual batches receive a pre-measured surge of mixing water much more quickly.

“It puts it in there right now,” he said. “It speed up batching.”

He also attached a hydraulic unit to the holding bin frame with cables running to the loading shroud carrier. The carrier lowers the shroud during loading of trucks, reducing dust emissions.

“The little things that we did to this plant,” Holland said, “if people thought about it, they would do it to all of them.”

Holland got started with Interstate “in 19 and 58” when he was looking for a part-time summer job in Statesville. That temporary employment turned into 42 years and 7 months of work, mostly in sales. He is officially retired now, but at 69 still puts in two or three days a week in the Raleigh area office in Cary, one of three Interstate offices. The other two are Statesville and Columbia, SC.

K.C. Eller founded the diversified company. It supplies equipment for use in asphalt, crushing, grading, concrete and utility industries. Frank Eller, the son of the founder, is CEO today.

Among the main lines offered by Interstate are Esco, Ferguson Manufacturing, Rosco, Kawasaki, Talbert, Terex, Telsmith and, of course, Vince Hagan. Some of them have been Interstate clients from the beginning.

In fact, both clients and employees have remained remarkably unchanged all these years, Holland noted. He cited the Interstate parts manager in Cary, Joe Harris, who has been with the company a month longer than Holland. Another employee, mechanic Alfred Combs, is a 42-year Interstate employee.

“We have very, very little turnover,” Holland observed. Among the 45 employees is Holland’s son, Nelson.

In 1989, the company also became a turnkey contractor — designing crusher and asphalt plants, selling equipment for them, subbing out steel fabrication and utility work and then overseeing erection of it all on site. “We make the whole job fit,” said Holland.

Such projects now account for about 20 percent of Interstate’s business.

“Unless the companies are very, very large, like Martin-Marietta, they don’t have engineers to begin with,” Holland said, explaining how Interstate got into turnkey work.

After four decades of familiarity with name brand equipment lines and more than a decade of involvement in the turnkey work, Holland has developed confidence in what he brings to a job.

“I’m not an engineer,” he said, looking over the new Hagan batch plant in Johnston, “but I think I have a degree.”

This story also appears on Construction Equipment Guide.