overview

CHARACTERISTICS

*Mile 698 Upper Mississippi River

*Mile 1.4 Black River

*Federally maintained channel with no maintenance dredging

*40 acres of open storage

*10 acres of blacktop storage pads

*1300 feet of existing sheet pile dock

*1.8 miles from Interstate 90, U.S. Highways 14, 16, 35, 53, and 61

*2.6 miles from La Crosse Municipal Airport

*6000+ feet of  CP rail siding existing

BULK MATERIALS

Coal, salt, fertilizer, pig iron, lightweight aggregate, cottonseed, and other commodities constitute the majority of landside usage.  Our marine terminal is equipped with three seven-yard endloaders, two material handlers, 64,000 square feet of flat inside storage, 6,000 ton fertilizer dome, two bulk rail dump pits, 3 truck scales, and other miscellaneous equipment to facilitate the efficient movement of your bulk commodities.  This infrastructure allows us to handle any combination of transloading operations including, but not limited to, direct barge to rail transfer.  Impervious pads and covered storage have been constructed to accommodate the proper handling of all the commodities we store.

HEAVY LIFTS

In the past 30+ years, F. J. Robers Company has been involved in the movement of bridge girders, large motor vessels, tanks, transformers, and other heavy lift operations.  Arrangements can be made to mobilize cranes up to 300 tons, for heavier movements.

INTERMODAL SERVICES

In addition to existing equipment, F. J. Robers recently purchased two Fuchs hydraulic cranes as a way to increase their unloading capacity and to meet the diverse needs of its clients.

The purchase of the first Fuchs 380 was a culmination of a year of hydraulic, rubber-tired crane research.  Moving from a 7-yard conventional cable crane to a 5-yard machine on tires was not without some concern.  Duty cycles, lift capacities, operator comforts, water fluctuations and fuel consumptions had to be factored in.  “We traveled to four states to look at six different manufacturers, read thousands of pages of literature and talked with everyone who was knowledgeable about the subject.  We wanted to be more efficient and satisfy our customers’ varying needs,” says John Noyes, president.

“Trial barge unloading was considered a resounding success,” says Noyes.  “We began demonstrations of the Fuchs 380 in late fall and were very satisfied with the results.  It gave us a perfect opportunity to try the crane on different products, during varied weather conditions that are considered the norm in our year-long operations.”  Products unloaded were salt, coal, coke, cottonseed, grain and aggregate.  The only commodity not attempted at the time was pig iron due to a lightweight 5-yard bucket not designed for heavy material.  The crane was put into fulltime service in the spring of 2004. 

Complete satisfaction with the crane’s handling and function, F. J. Robers purchased a second Fuchs in 2008.

F. J. Robers Company is a multi-modal marine terminal offering transloading services for clients on the upper Mississippi River.

EXPANDED OPERATION

Cargill Grain

In March 2006,  F. J. Robers Company added the Cargill Grain elevator division to its growing business.  Each year, we process in excess of  18,000,000 bushels of corn and soybeans through our state-of-the-art receiving and barge loading facility, serving the agricultural community across the tri-state region.

Continental Cement

Inbound rail cars provide 50,000 tons of high quality dry cement each year on average.  Our modern silo stores, and computerized loading equipment disburses, product to arriving tanker trucks for transport.