Diversifying to Survive

Ferma Corp. is making tracks all over California’s Bay area. That’s because the Mountain View, Calif., demolition and recycling company has virtually all of its off-road stock mounted on tracks. That is beyond just the usual excavators to include its recycling crushers, shredder, grinder, even an eddy current magnet.

(To view the figures and additional pictures in this article, you must read it in our online magazine.)

"All of our large equipment is on tracks," said Marc Ferrari, company president. “We own a nine-axle so we can move the biggest loads in California, up to 162,000 lb." Ferma needs that capability in order to shuttle its large impact crushers around to either one of its four recycling yards, or to one of its many demolition jobs where it can do onsite crushing.

The company was founded in 1963 as a demolition firm. In 1983, it added its first recycling crusher, making it a pioneer in the field. "We were very active in the 1990s when nobody was doing onsite crushing. Now it is common," said Ferrari, because of the economic feasibility of recycling.

While the company’s main product is still a base, it also has branched out into bedding sand, pea gravel, and drain rock. "While the majority of our recycled concrete product is ¾-inch Class 2 Miscellaneous Base, in this area there is quite a bit of recycled base around because of the massive amounts of concrete projects. So we have been trying to get a little more creative in the products we sell," said Ferrari. One interesting new possibility Ferma is working on is sand for driveway and sidewalk pavers. Virgin sand has become very expensive in the Bay area, and one local paver company would do well to use the recycled sand product, he said. "It will help them with LEED because they would have a recycled content product, and it would save them a couple of bucks while providing us an added value product."

Quality is the key to making any recycled product, and Ferma relies on controlling the material fed into its crushers, especially in keeping the wood out. “The last thing you want to do is let in one 2 x 4 and you will have a million toothpicks. Easier to pick it out when it is a 2 x 4," Ferrari said.

The company’s crushers weigh as much as 150,000 lb, which when combined with the low-boy for transportation puts them near the state weight limit. The machines are also near the height limit, as well. California has a relatively high transport limit of 14 ft 6 in., and on the low-boy the crushers stand around 14 ft 2 in. Currently the company has the capability to produce nearly 1 million tons per year of recycled aggregate.

But Ferma cut its teeth in the demolition industry. Ferrari said the company will handle all types of demolition jobs including, commercial, industrial, residential, marine, whatever. But it prefers “complicated.” “Anyone can go and knock down a building any which way when it falls any which way and won’t hit anything. We like tight, tricky, complicated work. It eliminates a lot of our competition from the bidding, especially on jobs that require specialty tools. Ferma does seem to have some of those,” Ferrari said. An example is the company’s three high reach excavators, the tallest of which Ferrari claims is the biggest west of Chicago by about 40 ft. “It is 158 ft, and the closest one I know you can rent is 106 ft. You can do a 15-story building when standing right next to it.”

The company has also bought into the use of a shredder at its big job sites for volume reduction. The track-mounted unit is moved onto site and follows the work around the job. “With the volume reduction we get a bigger payload on our trucks, and maximize our densities,” said Ferrari. “We also can run lightweight trailers on our trucks, which helps us with our payloads because now that the material is downsized, we don’t have to worry about tearing up trailers and having to run heavy-duty steel trailers.”

Another track-mounted machine that has been brought onto a job site is an eddy current magnet. It is remote controlled and is walked right behind the shredder. While most demolition contractors can use regular magnets to help with ferrous recovery, bringing the eddy current on site can be “cost effective in certain applications,” said Ferrari. “If you are tearing down a house, it is not cost effective to run it as the amount of copper and aluminum is minimal. Doing a commercial building or an R&D building, then it is very cost effective because so many of the pipes are copper and aluminum. We are picking out aluminum louvers from miniblinds with this system. Our recovery percentage of ferrous goes up from 70% to 95%. It gets the stuff you can’t even tell is copper or aluminum.”

It’s all part of Ferma’s philosophy of having the correct tool for the job. “When we know what we want, we will go find someone to build it exactly the way we want it,” Ferrari said. It is shown in a specialized shear the company has for handling steel tanks. The scissor-like shear has notches in it to handle the long, big curved pieces of steel.

The attachments are all on Caterpillar excavators, as the company runs on an almost all Cat fleet, including the engines on its track mounted equipment.

However, equipment isn’t everything. In difficult economic times such as what is going on now, like most contractors, Ferma has seen a reduction in its workforce of half, now employing roughly 170 people. But unlike other companies, Ferma took a chance and entered a few new arenas. One was asbestos abatement, which began in 2008, a roll-off service started in 2009, and a mixed C&D recycling center started in 2008. “We had been spending a lot of money in those areas, so we decided to see if we could do some of that in house and keep some of our own employees busy. While everyone else was backing up we were moving forward,” said Ferrari.

The simple mixed C&D operation relies on two screens, including a trommel; a raised picking line with some bins; magnets, including the aforementioned eddy current; and the shredder for processing. Ferma also has a 1,100-hp horizontal grinder (track-mounted) with a patent-pending spherical splitter on the front of it that splits anything that is too large for the machine’s intake. “We can take the horizontal into densely populated areas and not worry about anything flying out,” said Ferrari. The grinder is fed both virgin and C&D wood, and does make some biofuel. But most of the wood is made into residential landscaping products as well. “The landscapers love the C&D wood because the big problem around here in the green waste is that there are not a lot of big dimensioned trees being torn down and cut up. So the natural wood chip product has a lot of leaves and branches. Much of the dimensional lumber we get goes into the mulch for landscapers.” Recycled drywall, he added, is sent south to farmlands where it is most needed.

In California, there are a myriad of regulations and legislation that affect all aspects of a business such as Ferma. The company has a large enough staff and has been doing this for so long, it can handle the large amount of paperwork and other needs to stay in compliance. The challenge is competing against the companies dodging some of what California asks for; not filing on time, not filling out the quarterly reports, etc. Those contractors can provide a lower price, and many customers don’t look at the whole picture, just the price. “We are not always the cheapest bid, but there are other important factors that come with that. For example, we just received an award for our safety record being in the top half percent in our
business,” said Ferrari.

Ferrari says little is too difficult in doing demolition. But in the current business environment “it comes down to right now there is some good work out there being taken on by companies that are just softening the blow on the way out. Companies are fighting for work that we all know is non-profitable. It is difficult to compete in that environment. Fortunately, we have diversified enough to ease the blow to our company."

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