In business, it’s important to be nimble, flexible and fast. No one knows this more than George Pollock, owner of Mobile Recycling, Gallup, N.M. Pollock recently purchased a SH50R from BTI to make his scrap metal business faster and more profitable.
As the owner of a residential construction company, Pollock has seen that business experience a sharp decline in recent months. The equipment he used for construction, including a backhoe, was severely underutilized.
Meanwhile, his scrap metal business has increased and his facility has seen an influx of everything from rebar to bed frames. Before the metal can be sold to brokers, it has to be cut into pieces no larger than three feet, a job that was being performed by employees with cutting torches.
Pollock recognized that was a labor-intensive, inefficient way to cut metal.
“Cutting with a torch is not profitable,” he said, adding that they could not keep up with the amount of work they were getting.
At the same time, his construction company’s backhoe sat idle. With the help of Steve Bonner of Tom Growney Equipment, Pollock determined that his backhoe could be outfitted with a shear and pressed into metal cutting duty. He shifted resources (the backhoe) from the construction company to Mobile Recycling, and set about finding a shear that was up to the task.
Pollock decided on the SH50R from BTI. He was particularly attracted to how nimble and easy to use it is. Featuring a 360-degree hydraulic rotation, the SH50R makes it easy to pick up, sort and cut piles of rebar and other metal.
Like the other models in the SH line, the SH50R has high-grade steel construction, which provides maximum strength and a long service life. The large bore hydraulic cylinder and BTI speed/regeneration valve give it excellent cutting force and cycle time.
With the new BTI shear attached to his backhoe, Pollock noticed a marked increase in productivity at Mobile Recycling.
“We get an awful lot of rebar as well as household items like bed frames and pipe,” he said. “The shear makes things a lot quicker and easier.”
Pollock acquired the shear just in time, and is considering adding more to meet demand. An upcoming job cleaning up an old refinery will put the SH50R to good use.
“There is a lot of small pipe that it will be perfect for,” he said. “It’s a good machine. It does the job.”
For more information, visit www.rockbreaker.com.
