Let’s Talk About Throughput

PropX throughput statistics indicate 13.4 Million lbs of sand delivered and pumped in 24 hours, a new efficiency record as well as daily counts where our clients have demonstrated the ability to surge offloading above 12 trucks per hour while keeping the same small total footprint

Throughput? You want to talk about Throughput? You kiddin’ me!

The NFL Colt’s coach Jim Mora’s famous PLAYOFFS! Rant from 2001 is a fitting theme for our update here going into the second half of 2020. In 2019 and the first Quarter of 2020, PropX client’s throughput sand volumes show the benefit of using our box system on jobs with consistent high proppant throughput.

Number of Separate Instanced of PropX Clients Delivered & Pumped Lbs/day (2019 & Q1 2020)

There is a misconception in the completions industry that needs to be addressed. That misconception is that containerized last mile sand delivery systems are not preferred to handle high throughput frac operations (ie: 5 Million Lbs or more of proppant pumped per day) because a silo system’s inventory capacity provides a larger buffer.

Data collected by PropX through our last mile software, PropDispatch, demonstrates not only that our box system is sufficient for consistently high throughput, but excels in the highest throughput operational environments. Box systems debottleneck sand delivery during periods of high throughput due their ability to surge offloads during small, but critical intervals. A box system provides clients with the ability to minimize both their cost and total wellsite footprint when considering truck offloading footprint on location while also benefitting from fewer unique trucks per job.

When the total “gate to gate” (wellsite arrival to wellsite departure) delivery time and variance of that time is consistently low, it allows for a more sustainable high throughput delivery to the wellsite. As our data indicates, PropX users can deliver in excess of 800k lbs in an hour, the equivalent of 16 pneumatic trucks offloading simultaneously every single hour.

The nature of frac sand demand at the wellsite is inherently sporadic. It is not uncommon for average wellsite demand to vary as much as 50% day to day. The mobility of our box system provides the needed flexibility for inventory levels to fluctuate naturally while adjustments to total driver count can remain minimally invasive. This dynamic provides a more consistent workload for the base level trucking fleet over time via more turns per truck ultimately enabling a lower cost structure, a leaner supply chain, better driver retention and more reliable throughput.

If you follow the last mile sand logistics space, you are aware of how one of PropX’s clients, Pronghorn Energy Services, talks about keeping up with “peak demand” and how they believe container systems allow them to best keep up with peak demand to surge deliveries without having to make frequent or dramatic adjustments to base driver count.

One of the leading silo providers makes a statement that a container system can only unload a maximum of 7 trucks per hour and while fracturing operations are active, 0. ZERO! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? They explicitly state “Boxes struggle to keep up with the pace of modern frac design volumes/hour”. This statement is incorrect. Below you will find the number of times PropX clients have unloaded more than 8, 10 and 12 trucks in an hour during an active frac job in the last 5 quarters alone.

Number of Separate Instances of PropX Clients Delivering Loads per Hour (2019 & Q1 2020)

This was accomplished using PropX equipment with the same small footprint that our clients utilize day in and day out. On the other side of this statement, the silo provider advertises that their system can offload 24 trucks in an hour using a single 6 pack, each equipped with 4 fill tubes per silo. If this were to actually take place, the pad size would have to be huge, much larger than advertised by vertical silo systems because there would be 60 foot tractor trailer combos stemming out in all directions from the silo pack plus the additional footprint and time needed to get all of those trucks in and out, spotted and connected properly. The operational focus on efficiency should be on gate to gate delivery time and its variance. These are the metrics that sustain repetitive record throughputs over multiple days.

While we were compiling this information, we found what we believe to be yet another throughput record set by one of PropX’s customers, Liberty Oilfield Services, in March of 2020.

Statistics for Throughput Record

We believe that several last mile systems on the market these days can be optimized to keep up with peak 24-hour throughput, but at what cost and what compromises are needed to do so? How will the truck/driver count need to swing back and forth and how will associated costs be optimized and sustainable? How large will the actual footprint needed for unloading trucks, storage and delivery to blender have to be? With PropX, you can confidently meet your client’s sand demand without building a huge parking lot.