$575,000 Mistake

About 3 weeks ago, I made a delivery in Indiana, then my next message came in asking me to do a pump out at a customer over in Chicagoland. A pump out is where a customer has product inside a silo (in this case 23,000 lbs of sugar) and needs a truck to come over and set up a vacuum system to pull it out of the silo.

I stopped and picked up a clean vacuum trailer, stopped and grabbed the requested 60 foot of hoses, and headed for the address. Arriving, I was informed that it was at the customer's other plant, which I also deliver to, located about 3 miles away. I drove over there to find the plant shut down for cleaning and maintenance, and a crew inside doing some major work on the storage silos for sugar and starch.

In a typical 12-15 foot diameter silo, about 8-10 foot of space is taken up by the angled cone at the bottom, and the space needed for rotary airlocks, valves, and other plumbing. About 2 years ago, the manufacturer of these storage silos came up with a new design that sat flat on the floor and unloaded through a side mounted port. When the product got down to the level where it would not flow naturally via gravity, an inflatable bladder inside the tank would inflate, and change the shape of the floor so that the product would all run over to the side mounted port.

The problem is, this designe never quite worked. This marshmallow plant has (had) two of these silos, and in the past 2 years the manufacturer has spent over 275,000 in repairs, maintenance, and upgrades trying to make the silos work correctly. Additionally, in lieu of possibly being sued, they are replacing the two small silos with one large silo, holding about 200k pounds of prouct.

The cost to install the new silo isn't cheap. There is the cost of the silo itself, the trucking of the oversize load from Kansas to Chicago. The floor in the building wasn't heavy enough for the new silo, so they spent 14,000 to have the concrete floor cut out, reinforced and replaced. The new silo is taller than the building, so it extends through the roof. The roof had to have structural changes and reinforcement, and a crane (350 ton) cost 8000 for the time it took to lift and lower the silo in through the roof. The cost for me to come over and pump the sugar out of the silo was about 2300 for the day, and overall the supervisor told me they are spending 300,000 to install the new silo. Net cost, 575,000 for the replacement of these two silos because they never worked correctly, and he manufacturer picked up the entire tab.

So I scaled the empty truck and we set up the hoses and I started a vacuum. They took off an access port and stuck the hoses into the silo and started sucking up the sugar until they got it all out of the silo. Once that was done, I went to re-scale the truck and then came back and pumped the sugar into the new silo. Knowing exactly how much weight was put in gave them the info they needed to calibrate the scales installed on the silo.

Vacuum is powerful, and you have to work carefully with it. For example, if you put a 3-4 inch vacuum on a liquid trailer with the trailer unvented, the trailer will collapse and buckle at that level of pressure. I had my trailer set up with about 12-14 inches of vacuum, which is okay if you have equipment designed for doing that and know how to operate it properly and safely.

Someone asked a while back why I thought that my job was secure from the influx of underpaid Hispanic drivers, and my theory is that until their employers trust them on the level to send them out to do jobs like this and others I do, they are not going to be able to replace me. It takes a level of knowledge, skills, and trust that you can do the job right that you simply don';t have when you underpay someone.

 

I remember well, (and had I not I would have gone back in and checked your profile and read all your old posts!) and wondered how things turned out. I see some Lipari trucks running arond doing their deliveries, so I'll keep my eyes open and start waving when they go by. Glad things have turned out well for you.