Truck unloading - USA

Full trailer platform delivers faster truck turnarounds 

Leading supplier of differentiated paper and packaging solutions, WestRock, needed to increase boiler fuel deliveries at its Stevenson containerboard mill in Alabama, USA. It turned to Bruks Siwertell to replace its existing trailer tipper with a full truck dumper, significantly improving truck turnaround efficiency.                  

Customer need

WestRock, America’s second largest paper and packaging corporation, knows a lot about handling wood fibres. When one of its multiple containerboard manufacturing mills, Stevenson, based in Jackson County, needed to boost the through-put of its wood-based boiler fuel deliveries, it looked to its truck-receiving facilities.

Truck trailers, carrying free-flowing biomass, were having to be decoupled and reattached before and after unloading, which was causing a ‘bottleneck’ at the mill. The company needed a solution that would eliminate this inefficiency and therefore increase fuel deliveries. 

It also needed a system that would interface with the existing hopper and foundation and had to minimize any production downtime. 

Our solution

WestRock turned to Bruks Siwertell for its expertise. This resulted in a contract to provide a complete engineering and equipment solution for its fuel-receiving facilities. The mill’s existing 20m (65ft) trailer tipper was replaced with a longer, 22.9m (75ft) back-on Bruks truck dumper, with a full tractor trailer platform. 

The system comprises a platform and a set of hydraulic cylinders used to lift the entire truck. It is designed to rise to a maximum angle of 63 degrees, causing the free-flowing material to dump out of the back of its trailer and into the receiving hopper. The full lift and lower cycles are completed in approximately four minutes and the new truck dumper has the capacity to unload biomass at a rate up to 200t/h. 

Bruks Siwertell worked closely with WestRock’s engineering team to devise an installation plan that covered the complete removal of the old platform and the fitting and commissioning of the new platform within an eight-day outage. 

The new platform integrates perfectly with the plant’s existing systems and with the longer platform and higher lifting capacity, truck turnaround has significantly improved and eliminated the need for the coupling and uncoupling of truck trailers.