February 2023
Merschman Fertilizer LLC is a wholesale fertilizer company that handles dry and liquid fertilizers such as potash, phosphates, urea, ammonium sulfate and sulfur. It also treats and handles salt. Those materials are shipped via truck, rail and barge. To increase its operational efficiency, Merschman Fertilizer has undergone a major renovation at its Burlington, Iowa, facility and dockyard.
“When we look at our operation from a business aspect, efficiency is everything, and the help isn’t out there like it used to be,” said General Manager Brett Lindner. “We have more employees here right now than we’ve had before, but we’re also doing more things than we have done before.”
Lindner continued, “Another part of our operation would be safety. We were having issues with our old dock, and we thought we were going to be able to make repairs. Once we got down and had the engineers look at the old dock, we made the decision that a new dock would be the best thing to do.”
Merschman Fertilizer began the project in December of 2021. The original 42-foot dock was demolished and replaced with a 130-foot breasting sheet pile dock equipped with a winch system and receiving equipment that doubled the dock’s capacity.
“The winch system has given us the ability to not have to use our material handler to move the barge,” said Lindner. “We can have less people on the barge, which means less exposure to the water for our employees. It also speeds up the barge unloading process, so we can get things done more efficiently.”
The dock also features a foundation that can support a 300-ton crane to load trucks, rail or the 20,000-ton warehouse that is currently under construction.
“The warehouse will have a receiving system that’s the same as the dock,” said Lindner. “It’ll be able to receive 600 tons per hour off the barge. It will also have a dual blending system that can blend two trucks with straight loads or blended loads. We can kick the trucks out at about two truckloads every eight minutes, which is faster than anything we’re doing on the property right now.”
The dock and warehouse will also feature a new pipeline to transload liquids.
“The new pipeline will feature less feet out of pipe than we previously had, so that will give us the ability to pump more efficiently and faster,” said Lindner. “It will also be safer to bring the jumbo barges in here when we fill liquids.”
Efficient equipment
Merschman Fertilizer recently acquired a Mantsinen 60 material handler.
“It is the smallest material handler Mantsinen makes,” said Lindner. “We’ve never had a material handler with wheels. Due to the new construction of the dock area, we decided to go with a wheeled machine for less tearing of the concrete.”
The company is already seeing the advantages of the material handler.
“Since we aren’t completed yet, everything’s going directly into trucks from the barge to be moved across the yard,” said Lindner. “Even then we’re seeing a 30% to 40% increase in efficiency versus the old machine we had.”
Lindner has also realized how the material handler has helped increase job site safety.
“The machine sits up high enough that anybody can walk around it and be out of the swing radius,” said Lindner. “With the old machine, that was an issue. It can operate from any angle or height around the cab. It has sensors on it, so if the bucket gets too close to the cab, it’ll override the system. It won’t lock the operator out but allows them to move it back further away.”
The machine has the reach to handle high and low river levels as well.
“Everybody on the river system is fighting low water right now,” explained Lindner. “Ultimately — in the 20 years that I’ve been here — it’s the lowest that I’ve ever seen it. Having a longer boom while running the barges in high or low water is going to be a huge help. We haven’t seen high water yet but being able to have a little more reach will be great.”
Merschman Fertilizer equipped the material handler with a 5-yard Anvil clamshell bucket to increase its load capability and reduce product hang up.
“From a 3.5-yard bucket to a 5-yard bucket, we are seeing 60% less buckets depending on the material,” said Lindner. “We are cutting our unloading time and hours on our machine.”
Plus, the material handler has strong operator comfort features.
“The 60 is lightyears ahead of what we had before,” said Lindner. “The comfortability of the operators using it is great. It has a Bluetooth radio on it, so you can talk hands-free or listen to music off your phone. It also has a heated and ventilated seat and auto climate control in the cab. If you’re going to put an operator in this for 10 hours, we want to make sure he’s in the machine that’s going to provide the least amount of fatigue.”
Strong support
For its machine and service needs, Merschman Fertilizer relies on 5R Enterprises LLC, including owner Chad Cailteux and sales representative Dash Natale.
“No matter what brand you go with, you’re only as good as the people who can service you,” said Lindner. “5R Enterprise and Dash have shown that support. They may be three hours away, but they make it happen to make sure we get the support we need. We also have seen great support from Mantsinen. Sometimes with equipment manufactured overseas you worry about getting support, but they are there whenever we are working.”
Continued growth
Moving forward, Merschman Fertilizer wants to continue to expand their operational capabilities to service more customers.
“The company is going to go into rail transload,” said Lindner. “There’s a lot of nitrogen that’s coming in, and it needs to get transloaded into rail cars to hit the Dakotas where they don’t have the river infrastructure to receive by barge.”
