CN, a major North American railroad company, installed six Rulmeca Motorized Pulleys to upgrade two 40-year-old crawler-mounted MX bucket wheel reclaimers at the company’s Two Harbors, MN facility. James Cone Jr., terminal manager, and Mike Gawinski, Rulmeca Corporation president, inspected the machines in 2017 after two full seasons of reclaiming taconite at 4,000 tph. This was a big improvement because by August 2015, the reclaiming rate of each machine had decreased to 1,500 tph due to conveyor drive problems. The drop in reclaim rate directly increased ship loading times. Also, unscheduled stoppages of the reclaimers’ conveyors caused significant delays in vessel turnaround time.
