Night and day difference: Fuchs fleet provides trouble-free service to Mercer Group International.

Mercer Group International, Trenton, N.J., has created a multi-faceted recycling business that involves moving large amounts of material through its three processing facilities in the eastern United States.

Mercer Vice President Tom Mazza helps oversee operations at the company's two Pennsylvania facilities as well as its 24-acre Trenton facility that is home to an auto shredder, a nonferrous metals and paper baling operation and a mixed construction and demolition debris materials recovery facility that recovers concrete, wood and metals from that stream.

As the company has expanded, Mazza has grown to rely on Fuchs scrap handlers to perform the critical tasks of unloading material, feeding processing machinery and then loading finished product for outbound shipment.

The company currently owns four Fuchs 350 models and three Fuchs 360 models, all of them on rubber-tired platforms. The company has been buying Fuchs machines over the past four years. "They are replacing older model equipment, much of which was inefficient," he notes.

Mazza has found the hydraulic scrap handlers to be both productive and reliable. "The lack of downtime we have experienced with these machines is great--the downtime is almost nothing. Other machines we have had would break down and then you'd have to wait for a part; it's a night and day difference with these."

The machines keep rolling while requiring only minimal maintenance, says Mazza. "They are almost maintenance-free, really. Some have 4,000 to 6,000 operating hours, and we have no maintenance" beyond the standard attention to fluids and filters.

In addition to being untiring workhorses, the machines also offer versatility to handle the wide range of materials processed by Mercer Group International. The Fuchs models are used to feed material to a shredder and guillotine shear; load dump trucks with ferrous scrap for tipping into an export vessel; and are sent from one yard to another as needed. "The versatility is appreciated; we can move them town-to-town and state-to-state," says Mazza.

The operators who spend the most time in the Fuchs scrap handlers like them as well. "They are smooth operating and not bouncy and they have today's luxuries like air conditioning and a radio. It's a more enjoyable day for them instead of bouncing along in a loud machine," says Mazza.

The performance of the Fuchs fleet at Mercer Group International has allowed Mazza and other managers to concentrate on processing and shipping material while knowing that it will be handled reliably by the Fuchs machines.