Question Hydraulic dump wagon

This is a dump wagon.

Allan

Led

If you plan to fill it to the same hight, obviously you are greatly increasing the load on the wagon lift by increasing the size of the wagon by that much, possibly overloading it & breaking something....

The longer it is the harder the lift has to lift. You can keep the same wheelbase, otherwise the lift won't lift as high, but then the tail will get rather low for dumping into an elevator, and the hitch will seem a bit short. Things like that. Not real problems unless these things are critical to your use.

--->Paul

Watched the butter plant in town burn for several hours last night. Supposed to be the biggest butter plant in the nation. 3 million lbs of butter melted & burned & ran to the river. Not good thoughts for the holiday season, plant is mostly destroyed....

--->Paul

I live about 45 minutes north of New Ulm, and was amazed by the TV scenes of this fire as well.

Did the fire departments eventually back off to let it burn? I'd imagine they would have liked to keep as much of this butter out of the MN River as possible. As a firefighter myself, I'd hate to come across a situation like this.

Any word if AMPI will rebuild?

Matt.

I think rebuilding will be a tough call. Shortage of milk in the region, and they had talked about moving south about 3 years ago (during contract negotiations...). They are on a hill land-locked near downtown, just not a good location, no room to expand, semis are not so welcome in the area.....

Warehouse & cooler areas are gutted & collapsed, they are actually unloading semis this morning but wonder where the milk will go? The recieving building looks ok, the front of the processing building is standing, but smoke & water out the doors. My totally wild guess is rebuilding will depend on how this part of the building is - if it can be saved or not. If the equipment is a total loss, take the insurance & relocate... And if you relocate, head to where the milk & cheap labor is????? I donno.

The NU departement tried to go in & fight it, but the grease started floating around, they tried in three locations/ times, but had to back out. At least the temps were only below freezing, not bitter cold. And the wind was almost still. This plant is next to the town power plant, lots of LP & such nearby, plus a testing labs on the same block, and downtown business is on the next block uphill.... They set up their ladder & got Sleepy Eye's ladder truck, and sprayed it a lot. I would assume the plan was to control it, but had to let it go for a while. I see this morning they knocked a wall down to get in better with the water. Nothing burning any more, but I saw 25 fire fighters standing/ working around yet this forenoon. The whole dept is ony 30 people I believe. A long day for them. Everything, them, equipment, streets, sidewalks, are coated in ice & butter today.....

On the hill, the butter/ water mix headed to the river down the curb, they were diking it by 7:30 last night, but quite a bit got in the storm sewer & into the river.

There was a tallow/ grease fire in NU a few decades ago, I remember hearing from firefighting folks how difficult that was, any where you spray water, the burning grease just floats off & ignites something else.... Can't get it out.

Three million lbs of butter for a fuel source - wow. The best bet for starting it is an air compressor that went bad.

--->Paul

I suppose the environmental-type folks will get involved if they try to rebuild in the area ("remember all that butter that went into the river last time...")

It's too bad, Minnesota's dairy industry is in enough trouble, then to have something like this happen.

I worked in a creamery (Bongards) many years ago, and always remember what a pain it was when the floors were full of butterfat. Don't even want to imagine what firefighting conditions would have been like.

--Matt.

Whole town smells like lightly burned buttery popcorn.....

If they had any room there to expand a bit, but they are hemmed in, the one expansion area is a corridor for the town utilites like steam heat, LP & NG, and so on. Can't see that moving. So they really just can't do a containment pond deal....

New Ulm also has the big Kraft plant, all types of cheese, and I think it is Bongards that makes all types of powder from milk - if not Bongards, some co. Sleey Eye up the road has the big Anderson's Processing that works with some type of powdering milk also. A lot of white fluid around here.

What might help is that the AMPI headquarters business office is here in town also.....

--->Paul

I had forgotten about the Kraft plant in New Ulm. The smaller creameries in my area all seem to be closing down. Not many left. Milk gets trucked so far it's almost got to be spoiled by the time it gets to the plant ;-)

Matt.

--->Paul