“All railroads like hard rock for their track ballast and maintenance,” Bohrer says. “We have a distinct advantage being the closest hard rock quarry to the city of Chicago. We have access to all the Class 1 railroads, which tend to converge in Chicago, and all of the asphalt producers in Chicago as well. The armor stone, riprap that’s over a ton in size, is used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for shoreline protection on Lake Michigan. We stockpile armor stone according to size, with some as large as 14 tons.”

At one plant, material is completely processed in the pit and put into stockpiles there. At a second primary, material is crushed and then transferred via a 1,500-foot overland conveyor system out of the pit to a secondary crushing/washing and finishing plant, where it is processed and then stockpiled.

Wheel loaders handle all the loadout at the quarry. Material gets loaded into customer trucks, as well as company trucks for Michels’ road construction division. Much of the railroad ballast is transferred to the company’s nearby rail siding for loadout into railcars for the 12 different railroads Michels supplies.

Waterloo Quarry produces about 800,000 tons of material per year. Most of the material is shipped by truck, with about 20 to 25 percent shipped by rail. “Our rail siding is about a mile south of the quarry,” Bohrer says. “Probably 98.5 percent of what we ship by rail is for railroad consumption — railroad ballast. We truck the material to our rail siding, push it up into piles on both sides of the tracks, and use wheel loaders to load the railcars. One track comes off of the mainline into the yard and then splits into two separate sidings. We can place up to 40 cars on each siding, thereby allowing all of the cars to be loaded without being moved or rearranged.”

The man and his company

Michels Materials has owned and operated the Waterloo Quarry since 1996. The quarry was originally owned by the E.E. Gillen Co., a marine contractor that opened the quarry in the late 1980s to produce armor stone for shoreline projects. When the Gillen Co. went through reorganization, Michels Corp. bought the quarry.

After Michels installed an overland conveyor at Waterloo Quarry, haul trucks were no longer needed to carry material out of the pit.

According to company employees, you can’t talk about Michels Materials or its parent company, Michels Corp., without talking about Dale Michels. He started Michels Corp. in 1959 with the help of his wife, Ruth, who started out driving one of the company’s dump trucks. Though the company began as a pipeline company, it quickly branched out into other fields, including aggregate production.

Wheel loaders handle all the loadout at the quarry, whether it’s a customer truck or a railcar.

“Dale Michels had a backhoe, some pick-up trucks, and a lot of guts,” Bohrer says. “He built this operation. For the people who worked for him, he was charismatic. He treated them good, compensated them well, and gave them great tools to work with, and, in return, they gave him everything they could. There are still folks here who were there when it all began and have stayed with the company these many years. Dale has since passed away, but his wife, Ruth, and their four sons still run the company today.”

EQUIPMENT LINEUP

First mobile crushing spread includes:

Baxter 42-inch x 50-inch primary

Nordberg HP500 cone crusher

Nordberg HP400 short head cone crusher

Cedarapids 6-foot x 20-foot wet screens (2)

Cedarapids 6-foot x 20-foot dual-finish screens

Superior 36-inch x 136-foot telescoping super-stacker

Kafka 48-inch overland conveyor (1,500 feet)

Multiple shorter conveyors

Kolberg 36-inch x 125-foot radial stackers

Atlas 24-inch x 80-foot radial stacker

Pioneer 30-inch x 40-foot radial stacker

Dandee 30-inch x 50-foot radial stacker

Nordberg 30-inch x 12-foot radial stacker

DRM 30-inch x 50-foot radial stacker

DRM 36-inch x 80-foot radial stacker

DRM 36-inch x 60-foot radial stacker

Homemade conveyors (7)

Cat 988H wheel loaders (2)

Second mobile crushing spread includes:

Nordberg C140 primary

Nordberg HP400 cone crusher

Sandvik H6800 cone crusher

JCI twin screening plant

Cedarapids twin finish screen

Superior 36-inch x 136-foot telescoping super-stacker

Johnson 24-inch x 40-foot conveyor

Atlas 24-inch x 70-foot conveyor (2)

DRM 30-inch x 35-foot conveyor (2)

DRM 30-inch x 50-foot conveyor (3)

DRM 36-inch x 40-foot conveyor

DRM 36-inch x 50-foot conveyor

DRM 36-inch x 70-foot conveyor

Homemade conveyors (3)

Cat 988H wheel loader

Cat 988G wheel loader

Load-out includes:

Cat 988G wheel loader (2)

Cat 988H wheel loader

Additional equipment:

Tamrock Panterra drill

Komatsu 55-ton haul truck

Cat 365 excavator

Mack 5,000-gallon water truck

International 5,000-gallon water truck

Case 1845C skid-steer loaders (2)