Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/708006
AGGREGATES MANAGER / July 2016 15 "A lot of the area is farmland, but Murfreesboro is growing so much right now, the amount of residen- tial homes and multi-family homes being built is unreal," McGaffee says. "We've taken off here because of all that growth. There hasn't been a whole lot of roadwork going on be- cause of the lack of federal funding. If there was a whole lot of roadwork going on, it would be unbelievable how busy we would be." Daily operations Rutherford is a pretty typical aggre- gate operation in most ways — it makes big rocks into little rocks. That starts with drilling and blast- ing, which is contracted out. A local contractor does all the drilling, and Austin Powder comes in to design the shot, lay it out, load the shot, and shoot it. Once the blasting is done, a pit loader loads the material into haul trucks, which carry it to the primary plant located in the pit. After the rock goes through the primary crusher, it travels up a 300-foot conveyor to a service pile, or live storage surge pile, that can hold as much as 12,000 tons of material. A tunnel underneath the storage pile feeds material onto a conveyor that carries it to the second- ary plant with another crusher and an enclosed screen tower where three different products are pulled out. Processing activity at Rogers Group Inc.'s Rutherford Quarry begins in the pit, which is quite beautiful. Photo credit: Rogers Group, Inc.