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	Photo: Don Cecil

Daily operations can be a tall order for systems more suited to the office than the rough-and-tumble world of waste operations.

By Lynn Merrill

The toughest environment for scale equipment and software at the transfer station may be the bottom of the tunnel. It’s here that the scales are subjected to constant moisture from water leaking from the garbage, stormwater pooling, and the dripping of lubricants off the transfer rigs. It’s also subject to the brutal forces of the trash cascading down into the trailer, the reverberations of the weight causing the trailer and scale to gyrate from each slug of material into the pit. This is where reliability and durability meet their nemesis.

But the scales and software being put into use also have to help the transfer station improve the efficiency of operation. They must be able to communicate without human interface, through wireless or card systems at the gate or at the tunnel. They must be able to integrate with software and billing systems inside the back office or downtown at corporate, and it must be able to be accurate.

And being faster than a moving front-loader and able to leap tall trash mounds with a single handheld isn’t too much to ask, is it?

The answer is that the technology that powers wireless interfaces and allows data to be pushed out to handhelds is being used to make transfer stations run more efficiently. With scales that can withstand the intensive, repetitive use at the gate or that can handle the loading of transfer trucks, it all boils down to the bottom line. Let’s look at what many of the companies are currently offering and saying about their systems.

Selecting the right scale and software involves analyzing what the current and future volumes and operations will consist of. All firms provide technical assistance to ensure that you’re selecting the right system for your transfer station, and customer support is often a phone call or e-mail away.

Photo: Cardinal

A low-profile scale mounted in a shallow pit

Cardinal Scales
The Cardinal Scale Manufacturing Co. of Webb City, MO, offers a variety of scales that range from pit scales up to and including low-profile scales that mount above the ground. “We sometimes use the low-profile scales and mount them in shallow pits,” says Stephen Cole, OEM account manager for Cardinal. “The volume of traffic will determine whether you have one or two scales at the entrance to your facility. Here you want one scale in, one scale out so that you don’t have a bottleneck at your weigh station. In the push pits, that’s a very harsh, hostile environment where there’s water and debris that’s accumulating under the scale.”

The company just introduced a new scale using hydraulic load cells, designed for use in the push pits. The hydraulic lines go under the platform, terminating in a safe area where the sensors are located. “That’s something that’s new as far as the marketplace is concerned. With the hydraulic system, you don’t have the problem that you have with electronics getting wet. All you have in there is a mechanical hydraulic device that is the weighing element. Typically, in those scale pits, there are a lot of forces coming down. You want to oversize the weigh bridge and the load cells. We can use 75,000-pound load cells in those type of scales.”

The company also offers software that is designed for all different types of bulk material. The basic software package can handle up to four scales that can handle scaling in and out. In addition, the software has the capability of handling various commodities by weight, volume, or units, such as tires or appliances. It provides for various reports on vehicle types and customers, even allowing traffic-flow analysis. “You can even break it down on an hourly basis and look at where your highest volumes are, and know when you need more operators,” says Cole.

Carolina Software
The core product from Wilmington, NC–based Carolina Software Inc. is WasteWorks, a point-of-sale system for scale facilities. “For us, whether it’s a landfill or transfer station doesn’t play too much into how the software works,” says Carolina Vice President Jon Leeds. “Overall, our products handle the processing of vehicles into and out of a facility. We handle all of the reporting for management, such as financial, billing and the receivable side, and basically anything else that you’re going to do at a facility.”

The software is capable of keeping up with how much waste is in a particular outbound transfer truck and how much material is on hand inside the facility. “We also have automation, where inbound vehicles coming to a transfer station can be processed with a numeric keypad or barcode reader,” says Leeds. “It gives you an express-lane capability to process these vehicles. We’ve added being able to capture a snapshot of the driver when a transaction is completed and store that with the text from the ticket. In an automated situation, you gain some security and a little bit of checks and balances on the back side in case there’s ever any question of who the driver was.”

In addition to that, the software can also capture shots of the load of materials and of license plates—up to eight photos per transaction—and store that information. “We’re putting this camera in the automated enclosure, similar to what would happen at an ATM,” says Leeds. “When the transaction is complete, that triggers the snapshot. When you look at the snapshot, right next to it on the screen is the text from the ticket. More and more, people want automation combined with their software packages. They want this control over traffic control and cameras.”

The company also has developed a handheld devise that includes a printer that can be carried on an employee’s belt. “You can handle a lot of these flat-rate transactions right on the tipping floor with the handheld,” says Leeds. “What that does is keeps a lot of the traffic off of your scales that would normally cause lines. That’s been a big addition for us.”

DesertMicro
DesertMicro’s customers have continually asked the Jacksonville, FL–based company to “automate and innovate so that they can use one piece of software,” says Barry Grahek, president. “What we’ve released in the fourth quarter is our complete new scale-management system. It allows you to use a touch-screen, point-of-sale application that we’ve developed for scale management to track all types of vehicle activities that are being brought into the transfer station, as well as payment types, and manage a buyback center. We’ve integrated into a touch-screen, point-of-sale application the ability to accept cash, credit, or check payment for disposal. And to be able to manage a buyback center where the hauler generates a receipt that can be turned into check or cash.”

Photo: Don Cecil

Many problems can be caught at the gate.

The other thing that goes along with the point-of-sale touch screen is completely automated, unattended landfill operation. “Swipe-cards can be given to customers so that they can swipe a card that will activate gate access and capture weight,” says Grahek. “The card is then swiped at the end of the transaction to capture the tare weight, finalize the scale ticket, and activate gate exit for the hauler.”

The automated feature is limited, depending on the number of materials that are being brought in. “If it’s a single stream, it works very well,” says Grahek. “If it’s a multiple stream, someone needs to be in charge of grading that material and identifying what type of commodity is being brought in. We’ve got handhelds that will allow the operator that’s unloading the trucks to grade the commodity so that you can still do an unattended scale house, because while the truck is exiting the facility, the scale ticket and commodity has already been graded and updated for the driver.”

In the tunnel, the integrity of the signal from the scale is critical to success in integrating the data into the software. “They’re just sending the signal back to our system via any type of wire or wireless system. It works very well, but we are dependent on that signal from the scale,” says Grahek.

Paradigm Software
"A lot of our transfer stations have been going to automation,” reports Chris Holmes, managing director of technical support with Paradigm Software LLC. “Some of the newer and neater things we’ve been doing have been with automation. We have some sites that have unattended lanes for the haulers. The drivers are using a proximity card that they can keep in their wallets. They will drive into the tunnel under the transfer station and will scan their card. There is an external display monitor that will tell the driver certain information. We have some sites that have external keypads to key in additional information that all goes back to the remote scale house. The ticket will generate at the tunnel scale. We’ve also worked with very large displays so that the loading operator knows how much tonnage is on the floor at any given time, and we’ve developed formulas for the customers as to how many trucks they’re going to need to take that tonnage out.”

By using the proximity card, the system sends a signal from the tunnel to let the loader operator know a truck is in place. “The loader has an LED weight-indicator display up on top [on the tipping floor] so that the loader knows how much weight to put on the truck,” says Phil Weglein, president of the Lutherville, MD–based company. “When he’s finished loading, we use a remote control, and the loader will hit that in his cab. That sets off a siren down in the tunnel to let the driver know that he’s full. All the driver has to do at that point is swipe his card a second time, and that completes the transaction and prints out a ticket. It’s a very integrated system.”

Another useful feature from Paradigm is its “alerts module.” “You can set up an alert that says, ‘At 10 a.m. I need to know how much MSW came in,’” Weglein says. “You can set it up so that you can receive an e-mail with those totals. What’s nice about that system is that you can send that to an exchange and the exchange can either e-mail it to you or text-message you. The site managers can get pages throughout the day with the site tonnage.”

PC Scale
PC Scale Inc. of Oxford, PA, offers both commercial-grade and custom software for scale management. “In 2006, we purchased Transcomp Solutions route management software,” says Ken Good, company president. “We now have a complete offering of software. We integrate directly or wirelessly with floor scales. We have a wireless handheld that can be used on the floor. If there’s a difference between what the driver has stated in his load, and how the load was categorized on the floor, or if a spotter finds that the load is coming in as C&D and the floor finds that there is something mixed into the load, from the handheld unit the spotter can bring up that load, adjust the mix of the load on the handheld, and save the transaction so that when the driver pulls out, the correct load is specified on the outbound and therefore the correct charges appear.”

The system is such that as soon as the transaction occurs at the inbound scales it is automatically uploaded to the handheld. “What appears on the screen is a list of all the transactions, identifiable by the truck number,” states Good. “It’s very easy for the spotters to say, ‘There it is: This load should be X number of tons of municipal waste but you’ve got some commingled recyclables in there.’ The spotter can make the adjustment from the preselected list, and the wireless updates the transaction in the database.”

Information Systems Inc.
Information Systems Inc. has a standard system for scale-house management as well as an advanced package for driver control at the tunnel scale. “The driver can come up and swipe an ID card, then work with the system to process that transaction,” says Jim Manley, president of the Baltimore-based company. “It can prompt for type of material, and what the destination is going to be. For some of our facilities, they may have five or six landfills options that they can go to. Either that can be picked by the driver from a list of available facilities for the day, or it can be something that a management person could do.”

The data entry is made on a touch-screen pad within the tunnel, but the challenge is to ensure that the system will work reliably in an environment of vibration, moisture, and direct impact. “We can shock-load the driver-prompting unit so that it’s got some dampening of the vehicles as they’re going by, and also the components can have a rubber gasket where they’re mounted. For sure, it’s an issue.”

Acknowledging the multicultural nature of the refuse business, language barriers can create operational barriers when it relates to automated operation. “One of the things that we’ve been working on with our next release is having multilanguage so that the drivers can have an alternate language in order to interact with the system. We’re talking about just Spanish, but the potential is there if we can find someone to do the terminology and different language.”

Vulcan On-Board Scales
Based in Kent, WA, Vulcan On-Board Scales provides scale systems for use on transfer trucks and trailers in order to maximize the loads. “On the tractors, we can do fifth-wheel or spring systems, while on the trailers we do center hanger or single-point suspensions,” says Rick Talbot, marketing and sales for the company. “No matter what kind of configuration they have on their tractors and trailers, we can scale it. In those cases, the information can either be wired or wireless, provided to a score board in the transfer station so that the loader can see what they’re loading.”

One advantage of an onboard scale system is that it avoids some of the maintenance issues found within the station itself.

“Most transfer stations have certified scales onsite, but they’re generally not in the loading area. Typically, these trucks are 10% to 20% underloading. There are huge economic reasons why you want to maximize the weight on the trailers. One client that started out with pit scales ran into a lot of maintenance issues. They had flooding issues and how to keep it clean, and their maintenance costs were high. They also had problems with lightning storms knocking out their electronics. They found that by going to onboard scales, it was much less costly.”

Interfaces can be accomplished by a wired cable between the transfer rig and the station, although wireless has been used. While cable interfaces offer greater reliability of data transfer, a maintenance issue is that drivers sometimes forget to disconnect and end up pulling the cable out, reports Talbot. Wireless offers an alternative, but some clients are concerned that there could be radio signal interruption.

Rice Lake Weighing Systems
Rice Lake Weighing Systems offers motor-truck scales in a variety of configurations, dependant on soil conditions, whether they’re pit or pitless, whether it’s a new or retrofit installation.

“We’ve developed a reputation for retrofitting customers existing legacy assets,” says James Sexton, vice president of marketing. “For example, if the scales are in pits or under covered areas and they need to be replaced, what we can do is get the dimensional take-offs and actually customize a weigh bridge to replace the one that’s in there. Most of the new truck-scale assets that are purchased today are low-profile above-ground so that they’re accessible from the standpoint of technicians and maintenance. The most popular is the steel deck version, followed closely behind by concrete decks.”

The company offers a diagnostic junction box called the IQ Product. “We’re using a conventional or legacy type of strain-gauge transducer that’s analog in design, and then we’re doing our digital electronics outside of that in the IQ,” reports Sexton. “Essentially, it gives us the benefits of being able to look at load cells in a patterned way. If a customer loses a cell for any type of a reason, it gives us the ability to allow the customer to continue to weigh until they can get the cell replaced. You can very quickly isolate the cell, jack the platform, and replace the cell, and then by putting in the values associated with the original cells, the customer’s back up in business.”

Rice Lake builds its weigh bridges using the same approach and materials used in highway bridge construction, resulting in a more durable product with up to 25 years of life. “You pay a little bit more for it initially, but it’s a very ridged, heavy-duty design with typically 6,000 pounds more steel,” says Sexton.

Contributing writer Lynn Merrill is a consultant based in southern California.

MSW - May/June 2007