Duragrind's owners expanding into vacant Anchor Coupling building

STERLING – You can't say these guys have bitten off more than they can chew.

A couple of young – but certainly not inexperienced – local entrepreneurs are expanding into the Anchor Coupling building at 2910 W. LeFevre Road.

Kyle T. Young, 28, of Rock Falls, and Michael Carrier Jr., 34, of Sterling, bought the vacant site for $490,000 on Jan. 31, and are in the process of remodeling its 30,000-square-foot building to fit the growing needs of Duragrind, now headquartered just up the road at 1704 Westwood Drive.

They'll be just about tripling their space.

"We're really excited to be making the move," Young said.

Duragrind, which Young founded in 2010, makes grinder wear parts – the muscle in those machines that munch up asphalt roof shingles so they can be recycled into road resurfacing materials, and turn felled trees and other wood waste into mulch.

You can find Young and Carrier's parts in grinders all over the country – they sell to companies with names such as Morbark and Rotochopper, Hogzilla and Precision Husky – and right here at home – that big grinder at Ryan's Tree Service in western Whiteside County, for instance, spits out mulch chewed up with Duragrind chompers.

The company also does a host of custom fabrication and machining work.

Carrier, a skilled fabricator, and Young merged their talents is 2013, and together they are Young Carrier LLC.

They pride themselves on their ability to innovate – they put a lot of effort into research and development – and are "one of the only grinder wear parts manufacturers to have tips/inserts designed specifically for grinding asphalt shingles," according to their website.

Workers have been crawling all over the new site for the last few weeks, and Young, Carrier and their staff of about a dozen expect to be able to move into their new digs in about 2 months.

The one-story tan metal building, which for now still bears the Anchor Coupling sign, has been empty for some time.

Caterpillar subsidiary Anchor Coupling, which makes hydraulic hose parts, announced in June 2014 that it would consolidate the operations of its Dixon plant and two Sterling sites with its corporate headquarters in Menominee, Michigan, which cost the Sauk Valley 170 full-time jobs.

Greater Sterling Development Corp. owns the other Sterling site, at 1005 Commerce Drive, and rents it out to raise money for its economic development efforts.

SGS Refrigeration, which makes industrial refrigeration products, mainly for food and beverage companies, also took advantage of Anchor's departure to expand its business, buying the nearly 35,000-square-foot, 21-acre site at 1100 Anchor Road in Dixon on Dec. 18, 2015, for $655,000.

MORE ONLINE

Go to duragrind.com to learn more about Duragrind and the unique niche that Kyle Young and Mike Carrier have carved for themselves in the recycling world.

The partners can be reached at 815-625-6500.