Recycling Plant Relies on Loader to Handle Material and to Clean Up

Stacy Seibert and her father Jerry Carroll keep a Bobcat S250 loader busy all day at Portland Recycling.

Today at the Portland Recycling yard in Louisville, Ky., it’s common to see a skid-steer loader moving materials off incoming trucks and trailers and into containers, the baler, or into outgoing containers and trucks. However, that wasn’t always the case. For the first 10 years in business the company did much of this work the old-fashioned way—manual labor.

Today, says owner Stacy Seibert, they wouldn’t want to go a day without their reliable Bobcat® S250 vertical lift path loader.

“We’d be lost without it,” she says. “This is an excellent machine with the reach (34 in.) and height (10.5 ft.) we need to dump materials in the container boxes we ship out.”

The loader is kept busy handling 30,000-40,000 lb. of recyclables a day, mostly aluminum cans and siding, wire, radiators and transmissions. The business was started in 1982 by Stacy’s father Jerry Carroll.

“He began without any equipment,” says Stacy. “For a decade this was a very labor-intensive operation. Once he bought his first Bobcat loader the business grew and we became much more efficient.”

Customers bring truck and trailer loads of material to Portland Recycling throughout the day. The loader and grapple attachment can unload the contents of most trucks and trailers in less than 5 minutes. “It’s much faster and safer than having employees unload by hand,” says Stacy. “Plus, we can pick up a single item, such as a radiator or storm door, and quickly move it to the next processing station. We couldn’t operate at this volume without our S250.”

The yard wouldn’t be as clean either. “As you can see,” Stacy points out, “this is an exceptionally neat and clean site. That’s because we use our Bobcat sweeper attachment every day. It does an excellent and very fast job of sweeping. Plus, customers don’t have to navigate through a yard full of debris.

“Our loader is the ideal machine for handling material and keeping the place looking good.”