“Impossible is nothing."
That’s the slogan of sports clothing brand, Adidas. And while WARE isn’t affiliated with Adidas in any way (they do make nice stuff, though), their slogan is something we try to embody. For example, when we’re presented with a project that sounds “impossible” at first, we don’t turn away. We sit. We think. And we figure it out.
Because it’s not really impossible. We just have to figure out the solution and put it together for our customer. This is an attitude that’s evidenced in some of our biggest projects. Like when we moved a 250,000-lb/hr. boiler from Houston, Texas to a job site in Kentucky.
ROLLIN’ ON THE RIVER
The boiler had to be transported on a special barge from Houston to the Gulf of Mexico, then up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to a public boat ramp in Kentucky, where we picked it up and drove it 6.2 miles to the job site. The boiler was 20 feet wide and 20 feet tall. Police had to block roads. Utility companies had to lift power lines and traffic lights and move signs because the load was so huge.
IT’S A BIRD...IT’S A PLANE…
Then there was the time we got a call on a Friday from a customer in Nova Scotia who said, “I need two boilers as fast as you can get them to me.” It would have taken 3 to 5 weeks to deliver them by road. Not fast enough -- they needed the boilers delivered in 3 to 4 days. So, we got to work, starting around noon that Friday and working straight through the weekend. We got done the following Monday around 4PM, when we finished loading the 238,000 pounds of cargo onto the plane. Mission accomplished.
STAYING ON TRACK
Shipping a D-style boiler by rail presents its own unique challenges. On this style of boiler, the center-of-gravity is shifted toward one side, so we have to find a way to center it on the railcar.This is accomplished with counterweights by calculating where the center of gravity is and how much counterweight we’ll need.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
We move a lot of heavy loads by road, too. Some of our biggest are around 187,000 pounds with tractor, trailer, and boiler moving down the highway — that’s 13 axles. As you might guess, loads that big need special permitting. We work with trucking firms who specialize in these details to make sure we’re aware of everything that’s going on during the transport and that we’re following all the laws.
For example, when we helped out in New York after Hurricane Sandy, we had to cross the George Washington Bridge with very large boilers. We weren’t allowed to do it during the day, so we had to be at the bridge at midnight to transport it across. On top of all this, we have to answer questions like, “Where can we park a tractor-trailer hauling a boiler while we’re waiting to go to the bridge?”
It would be easy to pawn these aspects of projects off to someone else. However, the companies we work with are a huge help to us, so we make a commitment to stay involved during the whole transportation process. We understand that our customers often have set-up crews or cranes in place to receive these huge boilers. They’re paying for those crews to be there. So we want to be able to keep them up-to-date on when the boiler will actually arrive.
ALWAYS HERE FOR YOU
Like everything else we do, our focus is on relationships. We want to understand what our customers need, develop solutions for them, and take care of them through the whole process.These big projects are just examples of that. We’re All Ways Steam and always here for you with new and used boiler equipment from the top manufacturers. Click here for more info.