Based in Tell City, Ind., and founded in 1935, Mulzer Crushed Stone began with brothers Roland, Edgar and Arnold Mulzer Sr. building culverts for highway construction. Today, Mulzer Crushed Stone supplies millions of tons of crushed stone products each year throughout Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. These markets are served by six quarries, 16 retail yards and more than 500 employees.

Quarries in Temple, Tower, Charlestown, Cape Sandy, Abydel and New Amsterdam, Ind. provide state-approved stone for driveway and highway construction projects, derrick stone, rip-rap, sand and high-calcium limestone for power plant desulfurization equipment.

Mulzer Crushed Stone owns and operates a fleet of more than 1,000 pieces of e-quipment, including wheel loaders, excavators, motor graders, drilling and blasting equipment, cranes, boats, barges, crushing equipment, conveying equipment, aggregate washing equipment, sand and gravel dredges and sand and gravel processing equipment.

With business thriving, its heavy equipment is required to work hard and achieve high production rates. "We run our equipment into the ground until it can't run anymore," said Bart Mulzer, the company's manager. "In fact, most of our wheel loaders have between 20,000 to 25,000 hours before we replace or auction them off."

Millions of tons of material are loaded and unloaded onto barges and trucks every year, making wheel loaders an essential part of Mulzer Crushed Stone's fleet. Once floating cranes have unloaded the barges into stockpiles, wheel loaders are then used to load trucks for shipping material out to customers. Mulzer owns about 22 wheel loaders in the 30-ton class, including 11 Komatsu WA500-1s and two Komatsu WA500-3s, the latter of which were purchased in 1998.

Mulzer Crushed Stone owns all of its equipment and since the mid-1980s has been using Brandeis Machinery & Supply Corporation (Evansville, Ind.) to supply its wheel loaders. "When we are adding new equipment, we identify a need and go out and bid two or three different companies and determine which we like the best," Mulzer said. We spread it around, but our loader operators lean toward Komatsu.

"The first Komatsu WA500-1 wheel loader we purchased was used at one of our retail yard operations," said Mulzer. "We brought it in for a demo, really liked it and have been buying them ever since. As our business has spread out and grown, we've been buying them regularly."

Like its other wheel loaders, Mulzer Crushed Stone's WA500s are used at its quarries and retail yards loading out stockpiles of limestone into highway trucks.

Mulzer said the wheel loaders offer the right balance of power and finesse for the required applications, with standard operating weights and bucket capacities of 63,711 lb and 6.1 cu yd on the WA500-1; and 65,164 lb and 7.2 cu yd on the WA500-3. "Our operators say that you can see out of the cab a lot better when you're loading highway trucks [in these machines]," he said.

After operating Komatsu's Dash-1 version of the WA500 for more than 10 years, Mulzer said when the time came to add two more wheel loaders to its fleet in 1998, the company decided to try the Avance Dash-3 version to see what it offered. "Their 315-hp engine has more power than the Dash-1, and they're also a bit more comfortable to run," he said.

Ensuring that both its newer and older loaders remain in top operating condition requires Mulzer Crushed Stone to stick to a stringent maintenance program. "We have a staff of mechanics that make sure the oil is changed every 250 hours, and the hydraulics every 500 hours," said Mulzer. "It's all monitored by computers to get the most from our machines. And, we've been real fortunate that our loaders have not experienced any significant downtime."

Mulzer Crushed Stone's first truck quarry was opened when I-64 in Indiana and Illinois was constructed between 1968 and 1982. "Originally, we located our quarries around the new I-64," said Mulzer. "But with the building of power plants and locks and dams on the Ohio River, we located some of our quarries on the river and started loading rock and shipping it down the river because it is cheaper to ship it 100 miles by barge than by truck. A lot of companies don't want to do it because it creates a challenging set of problems that can be difficult to deal with.

"The river never sleeps, it is always going up or down depending on how much rainfall you have," continued Mulzer. "You always have to alert people to loosen the barges so they do not get hung up on the bank. And, you've got a piece of equipment floating out there, so there is always a chance of it sinking or flipping over."

However, the biggest problems that Mulzer has to worry about are environmental issues. "These include air pollution, storm water discharge and discharge from our processing plants. With our heavy machinery, we always have to be careful that our fuel and oil doesn't get into the waterways," said Mulzer. "You really have to keep an eye on your equipment so it doesn't get any leaks because even a small leak will go a long way in the river.