Grading and Excavation Contractor | Moving Equipment: In-House or Outsource?

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The debate centers on timeliness and cost.

By Daniel C. Brown

Contractors are divided on the question of whether it’s better to transport equipment with in-house trucks or to outsource that function.

McAninch Corp., a large earthmoving and underground utility contractor based in Des Moines, IA, moves its own equipment. With a fleet of 16 tractor-trailer rigs and one dump truck pulling a trailer, McAninch can move anything from a skid-steer loader to a Caterpillar D11R dozer. The firm works in several states, so equipment often must be moved hundreds of miles. All of McAninch’s heavy haulers are Kenworth tractors pulling Trail King trailers. They range over an area including Iowa, North Carolina, Missouri, and Arkansas.

“The biggest reason we keep it in-house is to save time,” says Curt Smith, McAninch’s heavy equipment transportation director. “If we hired it done, we’d have to wait on the trucking firm to get to us. By having our own heavy haulers, we can get to our job sites as quickly as possible.”

Smith said one of the firm’s Cat D7 dozers recently broke down on a project in Branson, MO. By having a truck and driver in Springfield, MO, McAninch was able to quickly retrieve an idle D7 from a job in Camdenton, MO, and send it to Branson. Voila! The replacement arrived the same day as the breakdown.

By contrast, New Orleans–based Barriere Construction LLC relies exclusively on three owner-operators to move its equipment, mostly in southeastern Louisiana. One trucker has three lowboys in New Orleans; another firm has two lowboys north of Lake Pontchartrain; and a third firm keeps two rigs on call in bayou country west of Boutte.

Ben Tucker, Barriere’s equipment manager, says his owner-operators, who are on call for him, can move equipment less expensively than he can do it in-house. “I can’t do it internally for what I pay an owner-operator,” says Tucker. “I’ve been using these other firms since 2003. Before that I had my own lowboys and I still had to sub out some moves.

Tucker has other reasons for his decision. “It seems like I have a safer environment with owner-operators,” he says. “The drivers have their own equipment, so they take better care of it. And they know if they work extra hours they get paid for them. This way I don’t have to struggle with employees.

“We average between 25 and 30 moves a day,” Tucker explains. “We’ve got to keep up the utilization on our equipment, so we’re constantly moving it. And moving isn’t our core business. Plus, it’s quicker to have trucks in three locations instead of having them all in one place.” Beverly Industries, one of the companies that hauls for Tucker, runs three Mack trucks, one Kenworth, one Peterbilt and one Volvo. The heavy equipment trailers come from Trail-Eze, Trail King, and Fontaine.

The owner-operators can take other business, but they check with Barriere’s dispatcher before they commit to someone else. “They work outside if they have to, but we’re their number-one customer,” says Tucker.

Tucker says the owner operators are responsible for loading, transporting, and unloading the equipment. Barriere maintains specifications for insurance that the owner-operators must carry. “If anything happens, they are responsible,” says Tucker. “They buy the yearly permits for up to 120,000 pounds. For above 120,000 pounds, they get the permit and I pay for it. They supply an escort car if needed.”

Ajax Paving Industries Inc. relies extensively on contract haulers. “We’ve found it’s in our best interests to focus on paving roads instead of hauling equipment,” says Rick Sparkman, equipment operations manager for the Troy, MI–based contractor. “We’re very focused on what makes us money, and that’s paving.” Does Sparkman have to wait for his contract hauler? “No, we’re their number-one customer, so they get to us right away,” says Sparkman. He pays a base rate of between $75 to $120 per hour for a tractor and lowboy, depending on the piece being moved. Permits and escort cars are extra.


	Tips on Securing Loads

Using the Right Trailer
Construction equipment comes in many shapes and sizes, and different machines require different types of trailers. “It doesn’t pay contractors to own the wide variety of trailers that they need,” says Jurgen Stehnike, a dispatcher at Homer Mann Trucking, Lakeview Terrace, CA. His firm has 10 tractors and about 25 trailers for hauling heavy equipment.

All of Stehnike’s trucks are Peterbilt conventionals. His trailers come from Murray, out of Stockton, CA, from Cozad, and from XL Specialized, an Iowa company. He runs one Trail King tilt-bed trailer.

With a nine-axle tractor-trailer rig, Homer Mann can haul payloads of up to 170,000 pounds. The axles are organized this way: The trailer has three groups of two axles with eight tires across each axle, so there are 16 tires in each group—those six axles, plus the three axles on the tractor. “They allow you to haul 60,000 pounds across those 16 tires, whereas a normal truck and trailer can haul 34,000 pounds across eight tires,” says Stehnike. Large excavators—of the Caterpillar 245 size—require the nine-axle rig, he says. Or, a Caterpillar D10 dozer tips the scales at around 150,000 pounds.

Homer Mann’s hourly rate to haul a Cat 245–size excavator is $195 an hour for the truck, and $58 per hour for one escort car. To that you must add the cost of permits. For example, the city of Los Angeles requires a permit, the freeway requires another permit, and the destination city probably requires another permit. Stehnike says one of his biggest challenges is to negotiate traffic with a large tractor-trailer rig hauling equipment. Plus, most major cities will not allow heavy haulers to ply their streets during either the morning or evening rush hours.

Hauling oversized loads is a dangerous business, says Smith. “Much of the traveling public doesn’t understand the oversize load signs and the flashing lights,” says Smith. “They just don’t understand what’s happening, so the dangers in traffic are great. People often cut in front of a truck, for example. And it’s not easy to stop one of those heavy haulers with all that weight.”

Newer style truck cranes are among the most challenging pieces of construction equipment to move, because they’re long enough to present a tight fit on the trailer. And, they’re top-heavy. “We do move them, because a lot of contractors don’t want to drive them a long distance,” says Stehnike.

Photo: McAninch

With a fleet of rigs, the McAninch Corp. can move anything from skid-steers to dump trucks.

Permits Online
The ability to obtain permits online has sped up production greatly, Smith says. Each state has its own Web site with a form to fill out. Many states offer annual permits for oversized loads. Overweight loads are different. “When you purchase an overweight permit, you ask the state for a route, and the state will analyze that route,” says Smith. “Sometimes they will change the route you’re asking for, because there may be a bridge that will not allow the weight you want to haul over it.”

Laws that regulate methods for securing loads have stiffened in recent years, Smith says. The federal Department of Transportation has a formula for determining the number of chains you need per load. Chains each have a weight rating, and you need to use the proper number of chains for the weight rating they have. “There is always a minimum of four chains per load,” says Smith. “As the load gets larger, the more total weight rating you need with the chains you’re using.”

Cajun Equipment Services LLC, of Prairieville, LA, hauls equipment for the Cajun group of construction companies and for outside firms as well, says Mike Crawford, transportation manager for the firm. “We have 27 tractors, about 100 trailers, and we can move up to 165,000 pounds of payload,” he says.

All of Cajun’s trucks are Peterbilt 379 tractors with engines ranging from 475 to 600 horsepower. The company’s trailers are made by Fontaine, Liddell, and Trail King.

Construction cranes present Crawford’s biggest challenge—particularly lattice boom cranes like the Manitowoc 4100, which requires 13 loads to haul. Some loads haul boom and counterweight; some haul the jib boom; and others carry the tracks. “In some states we can haul the Manitowoc upper and lower in one piece, and in other states we can’t,” says Crawford.

“We can haul the upper and lower in one piece in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. But in Florida and Virginia you can’t haul it in one piece,” says Crawford.

Truck cranes are another challenge. It takes 12 chains to secure a truck crane weighing about 125,000 to 130,000 pounds, Crawford says. (The weight varies depending on how much boom and counterweight are included.) “We run with half-inch chains on all our trucks,” Crawford declares.

Crawford teaches a four-day school for Cajun’s heavy-haul drivers. He demonstrates how to load and chain loads—frequently using customers’ equipment, which ranges from drill rigs to cherry pickers to dozers and more.

A Caterpillar 345-size excavator, for example, takes five chains to secure. Depending on the size of bucket, you may need to disconnect the dipper stick from the main boom, to reduce the height of the machine. Then you tuck the dipper stick under the main boom to get height down to 14 feet.

A Roadtec Shuttle Buggy (for loading asphalt pavers) requires six chains to tie down, says Billy Wallace, an owner-operator for Triple B Transportation Co. in Louisiana: two chains in back, two in front, and two in the middle. A Shuttle Buggy is tricky to haul, Wallace says, because it’s top-heavy.

We asked Wallace about the worst equipment-hauling accident he’s heard about. “Once a truck got hung up on a train track,” Wallace recalls. “This was about three or four years ago, before Katrina. The driver couldn’t get the truck off the track, so he tried to stop the train. But the train wouldn’t stop for just anybody, and it hit the truck. He had a folding gooseneck trailer, so he couldn’t raise the trailer to get it off the track.”

Such trailers now are outdated, he says. Modern detachable gooseneck trailers have multiple ride heights, and you can raise the trailer for high-centering a load.

Daniel C. Brown owns TechniComm, a communications business.

GEC - May 2008

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