Ohio crushing plant still going strong after 40 years

In the nearly 40 years since the first 1400 Jumbo portable impact crusher plant was manufactured by Eagle Crusher, Ohio has always been its home.

After being made by Eagle in Galion, Ohio, in 1985, the plant was purchased by a contractor in Middletown, Ohio, who sent it to its first job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. From there, it was purchased by Willoughby, Ohio-based Contract Crushing & Screening, where it operated until 1998.

At this point, the crusher found its current home – Gregory Trucking in Elyria, Ohio. It has been recycling concrete for the last 26 years less than an hour and a half from where it was manufactured.

It is not showing any signs of stopping, either

“It’s a monster,” says John Gregory, owner of Gregory Trucking. “There’s no end in sight. As long as the market is there and we keep selling material, we’re going to keep crushing.”

Getting to Gregory

When Gregory Trucking started, it started small.

“I started out with one little truck making little loads to people,” Gregory says. “People would bring me stone and I would reload it and haul it. It grew from there. It grew from one truck to two trucks to three trucks. Then we bought a loader, a dozer and an excavator. I wanted to make it a ‘one-stop-shop.’”

Gregory was already taking recycled concrete and asphalt straight to landfills. In 1998, he realized that he could crush the materials himself to save time and money and keep more materials out of landfills.

At the time, Gregory paid Contract Crushing & Screening by the ton to crush for him once or twice a year. Gregory saw the 1400 Jumbo in action, which made his decision a no-brainer.

“There were times [Contract Crushing & Screening] couldn’t get there for a month or two, and I’d be out of recycled [material], and people would want to buy it,” Gregory says. “I can’t have a product for sale and not have it on the ground because it makes me look bad. That’s when we bought the machine thinking, ‘OK, let’s control this ourselves, and we can crush as needed.’”

Gregory started crushing recycled concrete four days a week. As demand slowed around 2007 and 2008, he decreased that to twice weekly.

Now, the company crushes as needed, typically once a week. According to Gregory, he produces about 1,200 tons  daily of 304 (120 tph) and 1s & 2s (30 tph) whenever he crushes.

“In 2006, we were almost out of material,” Gregory says. “If we’d had one more year [like that], we’d [have run out]. We were selling 60,000 to 70,000 tons a year, which is a lot of material for a little guy like me to do. And then it slowed down.”

Remaining operational

Getting this kind of life out of a plant is not a given. Bill Compton, service manager at Eagle Crusher, says he knows of one other 1400 from 1985 and two from 1986 that are still around.

“It depends on how well the owners take care of it,” Compton says. “That’s a big thing. I’ve seen plants that are only two years old that look worse than this one. The guys just beat it up, don’t maintain it and don’t care about it.”

Gregory has been able to keep up with maintenance, thanks, in part, to a good working relationship with Eagle Crusher. Ready availability of parts on the manufacturer’s end helps as well.

“They answer the phone and that’s pretty important nowadays,” Gregory says. “They have parts in stock, they’re willing to listen and talk to talk to you. If I have issues, they’ll walk me through it.”

The feeling is mutual for Eagle Crusher.

“He’ll call once in a blue moon with questions about something,” Compton says. “He’s pretty self-supportive. We have some customers that call every week with some problem.”

Throughout Gregory’s ownership of the 1400, he hasn’t done much to the machine beyond regular maintenance. One change he did make, however, was replacing the crusher in the plant.

When he bought it, he took out the Bohringer RC-14 recycling impact crusher that had been in the plant since it was manufactured and installed an Eagle Crusher Ultramax Impactor.

Since then, maintenance on the plant has been relatively smooth.

“We’re on our fifth diesel motor for that plant,” Gregory says. “If that one expires, we’ll buy another one. Other than that, it’s just regular wear and tear. It’s a big piece of steel; you really can’t hurt it. You have to replace stuff.”

The most common parts Gregory replaces are the blow bars within the crusher. In the 1400 Jumbo, the rotor has three blow bars that aid in crushing material. As the bars wear down, they can be removed from their socket and flipped over to get additional life out of each bar.

This has to be done strategically, though.

“You have to do all three at the same time,” Gregory says. “If not, one will be sticking up higher than the other. For me, the bars last two or three years before I have to buy new ones.”

Gregory’s limited crushing schedule is a big part of why he gets so much life out of his bars.

“It really depends,” Compton says on how long blow bars can last. “We have guys in Louisiana that only get 10,000 tons out of both sides of the bars. They’re going through bars every three days.”

Eagle is always ready to supply Gregory with whatever parts he needs whenever he needs them.

“We stock a pretty good supply of the wear plates for that crusher,” Compton says. “Some of the other parts, such as take-up tubes, those aren’t high-selling items, so we probably don’t have those on the shelf. But we can make them in three to five days.”

Continued crushing

For a company that started hauling materials for other companies, producing materials of their own has now become part of the lifeblood of Gregory Trucking. And as long as Gregory’s record-setting 1400 Jumbo is running and he has the parts to keep it that way, crushing will continue in Elyria.

“We’re going to keep going, at least as long as I’m around here,” Gregory says. “As long as [Eagle] keeps making parts, we’ll keep crushing.”