Vonda, Sask. – A Saskatchewan manufacturing company struggling to come up with a better way to handle containers has spawned a product it thinks will find a home on farms and businesses around the world.
Aron Rizhanovsky, a design engineer with Highline Manufacturing in Vonda, said company engineers worked for about a year designing a system that allows users to lift a container off a trailer and lower it to the ground after the trailer has been pulled away.
They call it Can-Jack, and it consists of a four column system that attaches to a container on each corner.
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“The idea came with the need to load containers here at Highline. We either had to build an expensive ramp, or come up with a device that would allow us to raise the container from the trailer, then set it down on the ground. When the container is down on the ground, it’s much easier to load,” he said.
Once the container is full, the columns lift the container up, the trailer is backed under it and the columns lower the loaded container back onto the trailer for delivery. Rizhanovsky said large container operations have cranes or other equipment to load and unload containers, but smaller operations generally don’t.
The system is hydraulically operated. Each column has a cylinder inside, which raises and lowers the columns. Special locks attach the columns to the four corners of the container.
“It’s a square tube – a seven inch by seven inch smaller column, with an eight inch by eight inch column sliding on top of it. The lower column is 3/8 inch thick, while the upper column is quarter inch thick.
“Inside the column is a 4.5 inch double locking hydraulic cylinder, with two counterbalance valves. If something happened with the hydraulics prior to the cylinders, the cylinders would be locked in place. If there’s an internal leak, the cylinder will again be locked in place.”
At the bottom of the inside column is a foot made of a 16 inch square piece of flat steel. Rizhanovsky said the steel foot provides about the same pressure on the ground as the tires on the truck trailer.
To operate the system, hydraulic hoses are connected to all four columns, at the bottom of the column near the foot pad. A flow divider provides even lift of all four cylinders, regardless of the load.
The hydraulic hoses can be connected to a tractor or a stand- alone hydraulic unit.
“You can use power packs or tractors, if necessary. You need eight gallons per minute to raise and lower it. It takes about two minutes to lift, or two minutes to lower,” said Rizhanovsky.
Highline uses a 10 horsepower hydraulic power pack, with about a 25 gallon reservoir. The whole operation – hooking the columns up, raising the container, removing the trailer and lowering the container – takes 35 to 40 minutes.
“Each column weighs 1,200 to 1,300 pounds, so you need a forklift, front-end loader or something to hook them up,” said Rizhanovsky.
The top container lock on each column hooks onto the roof of the container and carries the full load. The bottom container lock on each column doesn’t carry much load. Rizhanovsky said it provides stability and a bit of tolerance when hooking up and unhooking.
The Can-Jack columns work on all sizes of ocean-going transport containers, from the smaller 20 foot units to the 40 foot high cubes. They’re built to handle a fully loaded container, which can weigh up to 68,000 pounds.
Rizhanovsky said the Can-Jack comes with an optional weighing device.
“In many cases, you cannot load the container to the full container capacity due to shipper or receiver regulations, where the load might be too heavy for local roads. You can avoid costly reloading of the container if you know the weight,” he said.
“Also, as we weigh all four corners independently, you can determine if your container is loaded evenly, so the centre of gravity is not shifted more to one side or the other. Shipping companies’ handling equipment is not designed to handle unevenly loaded containers. The centre of gravity should be somewhere in the middle of the container.”
The option uses four separate load cells, one on each column.
Gina Redl, with sales and marketing at Highline, said potential clients include certain types of farms, such as organic producers, who use containers for shipping; pulse and special crop processing plants, farmers involved with identity preserved crops and greenhouses.
“There are also safety considerations. Once the container is on the ground, it’s safer to load,” said Redl.
“Warehouses and trucking companies might be interested. Mining companies that use containers occasionally might have to rent or hire a heavy crane that would be fairly costly. With this, they’d have a device that allows them to reload or drop containers as they come.
“A few calls I’ve received have been from seed growers with containers delivered to their yard. They see the potential, not only in the ease and convenience, but also the safety. We’ve just started marketing it, so it’s wide open for us.
“We don’t know enough about who else could use this. Practically everyone who uses containers might be interested in one,” said Redl.
The base Can-Jack retails for about $30,000.
For more information, call Gina Redl at 800-665-2010 or visit www.highline mfg.com.
