Excelling at high production. (Excel).

Mark Leder describes the scrap facility he co-owns as a "busy retail yard." Leder Bros. Co., Minneapolis, sees a variety of nonferrous materials crossing its retail scale every business day.

For the past two years, the majority of that material has been compressed for shipment by an HV10 single-ram baler made by Excel Manufacturing, St. Charles, Minn.

"We primarily run four different grades of aluminum, three grades of copper and some insulated wire through the baler," says Mark. "It gives us a lot of versatility."

Mark Leder and co-owner Isaac Einisman worked with Excel to design a custom HV10 model that has an attached Builtrite Model 40S material handler, made by Northshore Manufacturing Inc., Two Harbors, Minn., to accelerate material infeed.

"They were excited to see us do it," Mark says of Excel's reaction to the customized touch. "They were very responsive, and made some minor modifications to their machine to enable this. The result has been a one-operator machine with excellent output per hour."

SAFE AND STRONG. Several factors went into the Leder Bros. Co. decision to buy an Excel baler, but among those were safety factors available on the HV10 model. Looking back, Mark Leder is pleased that the company made its choice on the side of safety.

"The baler has good safety features on it, such as the European Castle Key system," he comments. "It has operator safety devices that make sense and don't get in the way, such as electric eye sensors that are well protected and do their job well."

Last year's "Working Safe and Smart with Balers" video from the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI), helped convince Mark the features are beneficial. "After seeing the ISRI video on safety, the importance of keeping operators away from the moving parts of that machine is clear."

In addition to being a safe machine, Leder Bros. Co. has also found the HV10 to be a strong machine. "The physical integrity of the machine is clear," says Mark. "It is very well gusseted and braced."

After Leder Bros Co. purchased its HV10, Mark went to the Excel Manufacturing plant and saw how the machines are assembled. "I was impressed with the orderly assembly process, and how the welding stations are set up so that all welds are made from the proper position. They have a good group of workers, a nice assembly area, and they do some thorough testing of their machines," says Mark.

UP AND RUNNING. Mark Leder has been pleased not just with the equipment Excel makes, but also the people who build, install and service that equipment.

"The baler came in on the day it was supposed to, was offloaded in the morning, and we were running test bales by the afternoon," Mark says of the installation process. "[Excel president] Bryan Fisher and the other people at Excel helped us pretty well draw out where things would be, including electrical connections, so we got a lot of work done ahead of time."

Since then the machine has operated with very little downtime, except for maintenance chores like re-shimming the plate and flipping the shear blades: "Excel's service crew comes in with a complete service truck and the attitude that they're going to get it done. The service people are really good; they get it done and they know what they're doing."

The end result for Leder Bros. Co. is larger bales with impressive stackability, says Mark. "With a standard trailer, we can always meet or exceed any weight that is required of us. Our storage situation is better because the bales are much more modular. And our bales run at a very consistent weight because of the `blue light' ideal bale size notification system. We can count bales made, assign an average weight, and we're very close to the exact weight with a visual inventory."

The Excel HV10 baler has been a good overall purchase for his company, says Mark. "I would recommend Excel as a supplier," he remarks. "We're saving on labor both in running the machine and in maintaining our warehouse, and Excel has been outstanding as far as support. It has been a real good machine for us."

COMPANY: Leder Bros. Co.

PRINCIPALS: Mark Leder and Isaac Einisman

LOCATION: Minneapolis, Minn.

EXCEL BALER OWNED: Excel HV10 with attached material handler

COMMODITIES RECYCLED: UBCs, aluminum siding and sheet; light copper; insulated wire