New Ways to Weigh

Jon Leeds says there are a couple of important reasons to develop efficient and accurate processes to weigh solid waste. “The first point is money. When waste comes across the scale and goes into a landfill, aside from taxes, it's one of the few things that produce income for the municipality.” As Vice President of Carolina Software, a major developer of waste management software, Leeds said the second reason deals with regulatory reporting requirements. “A scale is the most accurate way to tell how much of any material has come into or gone out of a facility,” he said.

The scale house is where the weighing takes place. It is situated at the entrance to the landfill or disposal facility. Typically, there are two or more truck scales installed for customers to use. One scale weighs the loaded vehicle entering the site, and the other captures the weight after unloading. The scale house administrator subtracts the tare weight, that is the weight of the unloaded vehicle, from the total weight to derive the weight of the waste material disposed at the landfill. Using this figure, the administration calculates the disposal fee to be charged to the customer.

“The problems operators seem to run into the most are dealing with logistics and the flow of traffic,” Leeds said. The problem often has deep historical roots. Leeds explains, “Say it's 1980, and the town decides to start a landfill with one or two scales and one or two lanes. But now, 30 years later, the town has grown, and the demand for the landfill has grown, and the line is so long that traffic backs up to the highway.” Gradually, a string of negative repercussions may arise, he said, such as traffic fines, air quality impacts from idling tractors, and commuter annoyance at habitual traffic snarls at the landfill entrance, not to mention extended delays for customers.

“We get a call saying, “Hey, we've got lines. What can we do? How can we get better throughput? Do we add more lanes? How many lanes?”  Leeds said Carolina Software can offer an answer. “We're a software company, but we can consult with you about what we've seen works in other locations.”

For example, he says, “We could suggest they add a second inbound scale and put one of our kiosks on it, and have that become their express lane.” With Carolina Software's WasteWORKS Express system, he said the driver pulls up and is presented with an interactive screen where they can identify themselves and create their own input. The system grabs the weight data from the scale and populates that to the screen. “It's the point of sale piece at the scale house. We can ask what is the material, what particular municipality did it come from. We can factor in any kind of contract pricing and that all goes into creating a waste billing ticket.”

To resolve a throughput issue, he says the customer could triage their traffic flow, directing the “repeat customers who go back and forth to the disposal site multiple times a day to the express lane.” With the flow divided, he said, the dedicated express lane would handle the “redundant traffic such as the trash trucks,” while the casual users could be directed to follow the normal scale house checkout process. “If you got 50% of your traffic off of your first two lanes and onto this new lane, that's a huge improvement in throughput.”

To save more time, the WasteWORKS Express software can store the tare weight of repeat customers’ vehicles, inserting it into the tabulation whenever they register their code at the inbound scale, permitting them to bypass the outbound scale when exiting the facility.

“We're really providing software, hardware, and consultation,” Leeds said. “We're giving them input that drives some of these design decisions.”

WasteWORKS can also help customers with reporting and billing, Leeds said. “If you're a customer and don't want paper tickets, we can set it up to send email tickets. If a customer wants tonnage, they can get an email with that information. It allows us to deliver reports without the customer having to log on to a website or interact with an app. We establish what they need, and the software sends it automatically. It adds convenience for the customer. Instead of having to log on and go through an app to find tonnage for the previous day, how about getting an email at five in the morning with a PDF that shows the numbers they want to see?”

NUANCES OF WASTE

Rocky Strong, General Manager of Strong Data Automation, said, “We focus on more than getting that weight; we focus on how to interact with the data. There are a lot of nuances in the waste industry that have to do with how to work with the information captured at the scale.”
“For the more complicated larger clients, we perform a business analysis to determine how to optimize the workflow and how our platforms can make things quicker and better for them.”

Strong says Strong Data Automation's software can track waste material by weight, by volume, or by quantity depending on client requirements. While many truck scales come with a software package, he says, Strong Data Automation provides a more feature-rich package that, in addition to weight, can handle data ranging from customer-specific pricing, to payroll and staffing.

Strong Data Automation's customer portal allows users and landfill customers to log on and see their own data remotely, permitting residents to view the data produced when they drove over the scale. Because the load data is captured automatically and is verified by cameras, it can provide documentation for surcharges or other requirements, and “any invoicing disputes can be easily settled by checking archival footage,” Strong said.

Central Newfoundland Waste Management (CNWM) recently amalgamated 43 sites into seven transfer sites and one landfill, processing over 40,000 tons of waste a year. Heavy usage at the sites required streamlining the weigh scale process to avoid excessive wait times. To make invoicing and managing accounts receivable more accurate and efficient, they turned to Strong Data Automation to design the data management system for the reconfigured waste management operation. With Strong Data Automation software deployed, CNWM is now able to automatically process over 300 transactions a day with just one person at each of the seven sites.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) swipe access at the scales means drivers don’t have to leave their vehicles, enhancing safety for drivers and speeding the flow of traffic through the system. Time spent getting through the weigh scale at the site was reduced to an all-time low, averaging 35 seconds for inbound traffic and 25 seconds for outbound. Wait times and lineups were reduced, even during busy periods, which are easier to predict because the system can track volume trends by the hour, day, week, and month.

Strong views working with customers as a constantly evolving relationship. “As long as they're a partner, customers receive continuous software updates” via the cloud server or other secure means, Strong said. “We're constantly upgrading the software in response to customer requests. If we build a feature, it is added to the platform, and clients can decide, based on their needs and operations, whether to activate and use that feature.”

PICTURING THE WORKFLOW

To alleviate slowdowns at the scale house, Paradigm Software provides an unattended kiosk based on the requirements of the customer. “There could be a touchscreen computer or an LCD display. It could print a ticket, or it can email a waste billing ticket to the customer.” However, Jackie Barlow says there's a lot that goes into it behind the scenes.

With a customer base comprising 86% municipal and 14% private waste facilities, Barlow, Chief Operating Officer for Paradigm Software, said their service extends beyond providing the kiosk components. Paradigm Software's CompuWeigh Software is what makes it all possible, and it starts with consultation, Barlow said. “We take a step back and look at the customer's workflow to see what they're currently doing and try to find ways to improve.”

“With each client, we send out a questionnaire,” which he says creates a picture of the customer's workflow. With this information to aid decision-making, customers can build default procedures into their operations. Barlow says defaults can become a powerful tool customers can use to smooth the workflow by automating decision-making at the facility. 

For instance, he said, administrators can set up defaults that automatically trigger certain processes when customers enter their information at the kiosk. As an example, he said, if the customer enters the material type as yard waste, the system can automatically assign that customer's drop off to the yard waste pile at the facility; if they enter recyclables, the default could automatically direct the load to the material recycling facility. “With defaults, we can populate the destination in the facility accurately based on the material.”

“With our application, each facility can be configured differently. There is a lot of configuration that goes on during setup that keeps the scale operators from making inadvertent errors in the processing of transactions,” Barlow said.

“We had a client that was making 400 modifications a month to transactions that had been misidentified.” It was a matter of too many choices, Barlow said. “The staff person was given options, and they unfortunately chose the wrong ones, so they had to go back and change those.” After consulting with the customer, Barlow said, “We were able to streamline the selection options through the software, so instead of presenting the whole list to the operator, we were able to narrow that down, so that same customer is now making less than 25 corrections a month.”

“By analyzing work flow and using settings such as defaults, we're helping customers make decisions based on digital communication and not having to rely on individuals to make decisions,” Barlow said.

STAYING SAFE

Municipalities that transport solid waste should seriously consider the risks of driving overloaded, said Jim Janke, Integration Specialist for Air-Weigh, a manufacturer of onboard weighing systems for trucks. “Driving overloaded can lead to costly wear on a vehicle and even contribute to accidents by altering handling characteristics and braking distances,” he said.

To address this concern, Air-Weigh manufactures an onboard weighing system called LoadMaxx that integrates with built-in vehicle diagnostics, and can be configured to interface with the Geotab Cloud-based portal. LoadMaxx load cells are suspension mounted, either as original equipment or as retrofit components. The system provides a real-time readout of the load weight, giving drivers in the cab “the ability to make informed decisions when to stop loading and head to the disposal site,” Janke said.

“If the driver has to wait until he gets to the landfill scale to find out he's been driving overloaded, it's already too late,” Janke said. With ongoing advances in telematics, he said, “Weight is just another way to monitor this very expensive piece of equipment.”

GETTING A HANDLE ON DOWNTIME

The key piece of equipment at the entry to the landfill is the truck scale. All landfill truck scales must meet criteria of legal for trade, and they must be ready for operation at all times. As Fred Cox, Vice President of Sales with Cardinal Scale, explains, “The scales are typically running 60 to 80 hours per week, and if they go down for any reason, the landfill cannot do any business.” Clearly, they need to be of sturdy construction. Cox describes the truck scales as mainly “a solid bridge of concrete or steel.” While that sounds like strong stuff, Cox said there are some finer points to consider.

Landfill truck scales have three main adversaries, Cox said. These are water, debris, and lightning, any one of which can put a scale out of commission and shut down operations. Cardinal Scale successfully tackled each one of these threats with a product released in 2018 called the ARMOR Truck Scale.

According to Cox, debris falling from customer loads can build up under a scale and accumulate to impede the weighing process. To address this, the ARMOR Truck Scale deploys a new digital technology called the ARMOR SmartCell. Utilizing this specialized load cell, the scale is built with no moving parts under the scale and without linkage systems typically found on analog load cell-based scales, Cox said. This means debris never builds up in critical areas of the scale.

The ARMOR SmartCell is also certified IP69 waterproof preventing water from entering the device. To combat lightning, the ARMOR Scale eliminates the use of junction boxes inside the scale by dispensing with the need for power to run the load cells. Because they use digital technology, they are instead connected to the weight indicator in series by “a single home run cable.”

Cox explains, “There is no power in the scale.” Nonetheless, he said, “The weight indicator has communications with, and runs full diagnostics on, each of the load cells. Any time one of the load cells happens to fail, the weight indicator sends a signal through iSite remote monitoring software to the service agency through the cloud. If there's a problem, the servicing agency may know before the attendant at the scale house.” The remote monitoring software allows the service agency technician to know what the problem is before they come out to service the scale.

NONSTOP PROGRESS

The US Weights and Measures approval of the first standards for weigh-in-motion systems for truck scales represents a big change in the truck scale industry, said Jeff Capella, Head of Business Development for Mettler Toledo. He said Mettler Toledo, along with other truck scale manufacturers, played a significant role in developing those standards. And now Mettler Toledo offers a weigh-in-motion truck scale system called TruckPass that can obtain legal-for-trade weight measurements from a moving truck without requiring the driver to stop on the scale.

Capella believes that aside from helping to keep traffic flowing at the scale house, dynamic systems, such as TruckPass, can help municipalities reach their sustainability goals by reducing idling time for tractors, and it can enhance safety for drivers by allowing them to conduct transactions at the scale without leaving their cab. But Capella says for disposal facilities that own their trucks, there are other benefits to not stopping on the scale. He explains, “Stopping on a scale puts a strain on brakes and puts wear on tires. There are a lot of fleet management costs involved with stopping on the scale.”

Mettler Toledo estimates the cost of a weigh-in-motion TruckPass system will be around 20% more than their static truck scale. However, Grace Morgan, Marketing Specialist for Mettler Toledo, said the productivity gains can be massive, “A single TruckPass scale system on an inbound lane can handle three times as many trucks” as a conventional scale in a comparable time span. “If it’s a municipality that is extremely busy and they want to get trucks into their site faster and out of their site faster, they would benefit from a solution like this,” Capella says.