Since 1959 Garlock Equipment has focused on providing durable, efficient equipment to meet the needs of the commercial roofing industry. That mission continues today. Working closely with the nation’s top roofing contractors is the key to providing the best products to improve efficiency and rugged enough to get the job done.
CentiMark Corporation, North America’s largest roofing contractor with 80 locations nationwide looked to Garlock to develop new products for improving material handling on the jobsite. Labor is the most expensive component to any roof repair. Working closely with Chris Bisson at CentiMark, Garlock focused on 2 areas, better movement of large bundles of roofing material on the rooftop and more efficient and safer removal of debris from the rooftop.
Material handling:
As material is delivered the rooftop in rolls or sheet, bundles many times had to be broken down or staged in many locations. This was not only labor intensive but also involved crane time which is expensive. The Solution- Garlock developed the LowBoy trailer. Unique to the industry with a 2,500 lb. capacity, low loading height and a bed of live rollers, the Lowboy was the answer. Now large bundles are easily transported on the rooftop from one central location, and can be offloaded with 1 or 2 laborers directly where they are needed.
Debris Removal:
Old material from the roof is typically loaded into carts then dropped into a trash chute that directs it into a dumpster. Due to the design of current trash chute systems, many times a cart cannot dump directly into the chute because of support clearance, so the laborer must manually load the debris from the cart into the hopper. Current chute designs are round and the debris when cut is square, so many times the chute becomes plugged. The Solution- a completely new trash support system that allows the laborer to position the cart and dump directly into the hopper was step one. This reduced labor when dumping and improved safety near the chute. Step 2- a square poly trash chute was developed that is articulating to allow reduced setup and made it maneuverable to a 2 nd dumpster from ground level. As a result, Centimark was able to fill two full roll-off dumpsters in two hours! The new trash chute can support up to 20 chute sections for high-rise buildings. Lastly, the new system needed to be easily transportable so pic boxes and hopper racks were included to make the whole system quick to move, store and operate.
By working together with industry professionals Garlock continues to provide innovative products meeting demands of today’s roofing contractor. To learn more, visit the Garlock Equipment website.