Features Aggregates Crushing Week
Spotlight on Arro Crushing for its green techniques

Arro Crushing Ltd. is finding its success in recycling aggregates.

The Millbank,Ont.-based company specializes in concrete and asphalt recycling largely servicing ready-mix plants and recycling yards across southern Ontario. The company employs a variety of heavy equipment to tackle jobsites, including a Keestrack R5 mobile track-mounted impact crusher, and CAT 336 and Linkbelt 210 excavators equipped with hydraulic pulverizers and breakers.

“We service all of southern Ontario – anywhere within three hours of Kitchener-Waterloo is typical – and we will travel north of the tri-cities. If there’s a large pile of concrete, limestone or asphalt, we’ll go there,” says Jared Kuepfer, who co-owns the company along with his business partner Ron Kuepfer. “We’re a fully independent company. We don’t own any gravel pits. We’re fully a custom crushing contractor, which I believe gives us an advantage”.

Jared grew up in a farming community, where his family runs a company that works with natural stone for the faces of houses and buildings.

“I would get into a lot of quarries growing up, it fed my curiosity for crushing,” he says.

Jared worked with his father for eight years in the family business before spending a couple of years doing sewer and water main for a local excavation contractor.

When he decided to jump into the custom crushing business in the summer of 2019, Arro Crushing purchased a small mobile impact crusher to do smaller jobs, but quickly realized they needed a larger model to operate more efficiently and bid on larger jobs.

“We were cleaning up old barns, any small little pile we could get our hands on,” he says. “We realized that we were going to need a bigger machine that can produce more and do jobs more cost effectively.”

To find the right piece of equipment for his operation, Jared began checking out the various crushers available. He eventually found the Keestrack brand on the website of equipment dealer Frontline Machinery, which has branches in Woodstock, Ont. and Chilliwack, B.C.

“I had a couple of large jobs lined up, so I called them up. It took one phone call to figure out what machine I wanted,” Jared recalls.

Arro Crushing ended up opting for a Keestrack R5 mobile track-mounted impact crusher.

“Often when I bring the R5 to a site, people perceive it as a 30-tonne machine due it being so compact, when it is in fact a 50-tonne,” Jared says.

The primary products Arro Crushing produces are 3/4”, 2” and 4” recycled concrete, but the company’s R5 can also produce a variety of other specs depending on the needs of the job. Photos courtesy of Arro Crushing and Frontline Machinery.

Arro Crushing specializes in concrete and asphalt recycling largely servicing ready-mix plants and recycling yards across southern Ontario.

To date, they’ve been very happy with the machine and the service they’ve received from Frontline Machinery.

“When we need parts and service, Frontline is there for us,” Jared says.

The operation has grown in the short time it has been operating, adding two full-time employees. Jared has seen increased interest in his services over the past year, due to the benefits his company can offer aggregate producers.

“By leveraging the use of recycled concrete, pits can extend the lifespan of their pit substantially,” he says, adding that one customer they are crushing for has indicated that by incorporating recycled concrete they have reduced their virgin aggregate demands and extended the lifespan of their pit by more than 20 years. “We consider ourselves to be a very dynamic, flexible and a nimble player in the market. We are willing to entertain all sorts of challenges and do non-conventional crushing jobs.”

The primary products Arro Crushing produces are 3/4”, 2” and 4” recycled concrete, but the company’s R5 can also produce a variety of other specs depending on the needs of the job.

“We can pretty much crush whatever the client needs,” Jared says. “If we don’t know how to do a job, we are willing to learn.”

The company sometimes rents an additional Keestrack R3 mobile crusher – the smaller version of the R5 – to work on smaller jobs simultaneously.

Jared sees many growth opportunities on the horizon for Arro Crushing, including working on larger jobs, increasing their production capacities, and adding more units to their fleet.

“Our long-term vision is to one day have our own recycling yard,” he says.

At the end of the day, what does Jared enjoy the most about running his own crushing operation? Relationships.

“I enjoy building the relationships with the different quarries and pits that we work in,” he says. “I really enjoy leaving a site after cleaning up a nasty pile of concrete and leaving them a nice pile of aggregate that they can sell.”