Can A Baler Be A Game Changer?
Balemaster Fat Boy “has literally changed our whole operation.”
Crown Point, IN – (March 2013) Kyle Trayner, the president of KLT industries in Ayer, Massachusetts, is certain the Balemaster Fat Boy baler has been a game changer for his company – and for its suppliers, shippers and customers. “It’s been a win-win for everyone,” he says.
Since Trayner founded KLT in 2002, the firm has grown to three locations that serve customers in eight states. As the company expanded, it began to outgrow its equipment, most notably, the baler in the Ayer plant. This 100 HP single ram baler’s peak capability was around fifteen tons an hour, but frequent jams meant the machine rarely operated at this level. Bales typically weighed 1,400 lbs., and it took up to 40 of these bales to fill an export container, which made loading and unloading difficult and time consuming. Meanwhile, trucks transporting these lightweight bales were running up to 10,000 lbs. below their capacity. As a result, the baler was reducing productivity – and increasing costs – for KLT, their customers, and the shippers they used.
So the company ordered a Fat Boy baler from Balemaster, which was installed in September 2012. The Fat Boy’s wide mouth design promised to minimize bridge jamming, while its 3 motor design allowed the baler to operate at three different power levels, from 75 HP to 225 HP. This meant the Fat Boy could operate efficiently while handling lower and higher demands than the old baler. Maximum bale productivity more than doubled, to 35 tons per hour. Jams were nearly eliminated, baler downtime plummeted, and the full time baler operator was reassigned. Shortly after the Fat Boy was installed, it easily handled the non-stop demands of KLT’s busiest season. “It was one of the smoothest peak periods we had in years,” Trayner recalls.
But the real game-changer – for KLT and its customers– was the bales the Fat Boy produced. Weighing up to 4,000 lbs. (three times the size of previous bales), these bales allowed shippers to pack more weight into containers and trucks, improving the cost-effectiveness of every load. Loading and unloading became a lot faster and easier; it only took 14 Fat Boy bales to fill up a container, compared to the 40 bales that were previously required.
By improving uptime and lowering production costs, the Fat Boy lets KLT offer more competitive prices to its customers – and it’s helping KLT to attract new customers, especially overseas, since the Fat Boy’s ability to pack more weight into a single container means minimizes their transportation costs.
The Fat Boy has “literally changed our whole operation,” Trayner asserts. “I’ve seen it all, and this is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. In any future expansions, we’ll be putting in Fat Boys.”
For more information about the array of Balemaster baling solutions, visit www.balemaster.com
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