Demo is a family business for Britt Demolition and Recycling Inc. The company tackles challenging projects with durable DEVELON equipment.
For Tommy Britt, the path to a decades-long career in demolition work began more than 40 years ago when a tornado hit his hometown of Cullman, Alabama. The storm damaged a cigar plant, and the owner asked Tommy to take on the demolition work.
Tommy had some equipment for grading and other similar work but didn’t have any experience with demolition. Despite that, he did the job and found he enjoyed it. After that, he started doing demolition for the military and became in his words “hooked on demo.”
After several years as a military demo contractor, Tommy got his contractor’s license in 1993 and began adding civilian jobs to his portfolio. That’s also the year he incorporated Britt Demolition and Recycling Inc. Today, civilian commercial and industrial projects are the company’s sole focus, and Tommy has built the company into one of Alabama’s largest for demolition.
“It’s very hard and dangerous work,” Tommy says, adding that it’s a good fit for someone who loves equipment and likes tearing stuff down.
A Family Business
As the company has grown, Britt Demolition and Recycling has become a family business. Two of Tommy’s sons work with him; and his daughter, Melissa Britt, is a supervisor who oversees the company’s salvage operation. Before the demolition of any building, Melissa and her team — ranging from five to 40 crew members — sort through anything left behind.
“There are always items that get left in buildings,” Tommy says. “Melissa goes in and separates the items into whatever we can sell. She salvages the copper, the lead, the electrical components, anything inside the building.”
Melissa has been working in the business for about 19 years and in her supervisor role for two years. She has a master’s degree in elementary education, but she enjoys working with her hands in the family business now. She remembers as a child being in the dozer with her dad while he worked. Now she sometimes brings her three daughters on jobs.
“From a young age, I’ve just always been around equipment,” Melissa says. “I enjoy being able to lead a crew. You start with a huge structure and then all of a sudden it’s grass at the end of it. Then it’s on to the next site. It’s totally different day in and day out.”
Salvage and Recycling
Melissa and her crew go inside first and salvage non-ferrous metal. They use magnets to determine what they will save: copper, brass, aluminum, stainless steel. Anything a magnet doesn’t stick to, they pull out, process and send off.
Each crew member is assigned a room to survey. Melissa clears each room once her crew has gone through it. They use some small equipment like mini excavators but do much of the work by hand. The wire stripping and material processing happens, and then everything is boxed up and taken to scrap yards or reused.
“I’ve come up with different ways of getting it out faster and more efficiently than before,” Melissa says. “I have it down to a science almost. Because time is money, and we’ve got to hurry up and get out so the heavy equipment can come in and start taking down the building.”
A Revitalization Project
At the Carraway Methodist Medical Center project completed by Britt Demolition and Recycling, the company recycled about 85% of the material from the facility. Britt’s portion of work on the project in Birmingham, Alabama, took about nine months.
The medical facility, which closed in 2008, sat vacant for years. Corporate Realty had a plan for redevelopment and worked with the city to get approval for rezoning the 50-acre site. Britt Demolition and Recycling was chosen to perform the demolition.
“This project was a million square feet of demolition and gutting,” Tommy says. “We were tearing down about 650,000 square feet, a complete teardown through the basement. We were responsible for lowering the basements to five feet below grade. On the other 350,000 square feet, we gutted it out to the concrete structure.”
While on-site, the Britt crew recycled the concrete with a concrete grinder and used that material to refill the basements and the foundation. Most of the metal from the site went to scrap yards.
Versatile Equipment
In addition to the Carraway demolition, the company had six or seven other projects happening at the same time. They had 15 DEVELON excavators in use across the different projects. The company’s fleet has many DEVELON excavators to tackle whatever job arises.
“We used DEVELON excavators with different attachments, with grapples, magnets, processors, buckets, hammers,” he says. “We have all the different attachments to go on almost each and every machine. Whatever is needed for each and every job, we can interchange the attachments to fit.”
Tommy has been happy with the durability and performance he gets from the DEVELON equipment.
“For demolition, the DEVELON machines are far superior because their hydraulic radiators are separated from the other radiators, and they don’t run as hot with all the dust,” Tommy says. “They have a lot more horsepower, more bucket lift and more torque than any machine we’ve ever driven. Our operators love them.”
Their most recent purchase, a DX380LL road builder, has a higher undercarriage height to give the machine more ground clearance.
“I think it’s going to save a lot on maintenance because it’s about a foot and a half higher off the ground,” Tommy says. “When we’re running over rebar and other items, it’s less likely to get in there and rupture something. It’s a very good machine for demo.”
A Strong Partnership
Britt Demolition and Recycling purchases its DEVELON construction equipment from R&M Equipment in Birmingham. Tommy has worked with R&M for about five years, investing about $7 million in equipment purchases in that time.
“Their mechanics are well trained,” Tommy says. “They come out and take care of a problem without having to do it two and three times. Or if there’s a problem that my mechanics can work out without involving them, they will walk us through it and everything we need to do.”
The bottom line: DEVELON equipment helps keep Tommy and his employees running in the demanding world of demolition.
“People like our work because we’re on time and we get stuff done. We have the machines needed to do whatever job it takes,” Tommy says. “For the dollar-to-power ratio, you can’t beat DEVELON machines. They’re very strong, they’re very powerful, and they have a lot of added things like reversible fans and separate hydraulics and cooling systems that demolition people need.”
Find more information about DEVELON crawler excavators.
For the dollar-to-power ratio, you can't beat DEVELON Machines. They're very strong, they're very powerful, and they have a lot of added things like reversible fans and separate hydraulics and cooling systems that Demolition people needed."