A Powerscreen Warrior 1800 helped Ken White Construction meet a ballooning demand for topsoil
By Lori Lovely
In order to keep up with customer demand for topsoil, Taylor White, co-owner of Ken White Construction Ltd. based in Carp, Ontario, brought in the big guns this summer by renting a Warrior 1800 shaker screen from Powerscreen of Canada to increase production.
“We are growing our topsoil business,” White said, adding that he’s seen a “big surge” in sales.
“There’s been a huge demand, but we couldn’t keep up. We needed a machine that could do more product per hour than our old screener could.”
He considers their old screener, a 510 Commander they bought second-hand eight years ago, a good machine — and they still use it, but they needed more production.
Having tried other screens, including a trommel screener, that either clogged or didn’t produce an acceptable soil, White agreed to test the Warrior 1800, a heavy-duty machine designed for medium to large operations that require high capacity.
“Powerscreen sent me the Warrior 1800, which is the second-largest of that style, to try for 30 hours. By the first 10 or 15 hours, I knew we would use it all summer,” White said.
KW Construction mixes clay, silt and sand, and then adds organic peat moss from swampy bogs for nutrients and colour and to help retain moisture in the soil. According to White, the shaker deck-style screener from Powerscreen “devours anything.” He adds that he’s never seen the quantity and quality of soil it produces. “It can screen 200 yards an hour.”
Warrior strengths
The Warrior 1800 is part of the range of high capacity, heavy duty, versatile machines capable of screening and separating a wide variety of material in the most difficult and demanding of applications. These include recycling, aggregates, compost, topsoil, coal, construction and demolition waste and iron ore.
With low ground pressure crawler tracks, the Warrior 1800 is highly mobile. The versatile screen accepts a wide range of media options including bofor bars, finger screens, woven mesh and punch plate, while processing up to 500 tonnes per hour.
The Powerscreen Warrior 1800 is “amazing on fuel and new technology,” White observes. “It uses about 12.5 litres of fuel an hour. Our old one used 20 litres an hour, and it was half the size.” There’s no black smoke. “It burns super clean,” he exclaims, undaunted about having to add DEF fluid for reduced emissions.
The Warrior saves time as well as fuel. Its tracks make it incredibly mobile.
“I can bring it to the soil. It’s remote-controlled, so I walk it to the yard like a dog and set it up in 5 minutes.”
At 32 tons, it’s a big machine, but it moves quickly. It can also be easily trailered to other sites. Total setup time when it was first delivered to KW Construction was so short, White said they were screening 16 minutes after the machine’s arrival.
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KW Construction rented the Warrior 1800 for the summer because they had no use for it in the winter, but White said it’s definitely coming back next year. “It’s one of the first machines we’ve rented.”
He credits Powerscreen with “awesome service” and a good rental plan.
“We ran it for three months with no breakdowns,” he said. “We changed a screen from an 8-mm flex harp to a 6-mm straight harp, but they did it for us.”
Had the machine required any serious maintenance, Powerscreen would have taken care of that too, but White said the new machine needed only routine daily maintenance: grease the nipples; check oil, fuel and DEF levels; check conveyor belts to make sure they’re straight and tight; and ensure that the screens are tight.
“I had high expectations,” White recalls, “but I was taken aback by this. It devoured dirt … and saved our season.”
