The History of Tally-Rite Pipe Measuring Systems

In 1987 our president was managing an OCTG reclamation plant in Odessa, Texas. Tubing and casing were routinely transported from well sites and field yards into the plant to be reclaimed and then returned back to the operator. All of the reclamation effort, including transportation, was priced as a package and the competition was keen so the operating margins were extremely slim. The facility absolutely had to operate at, or near peak efficiency at all times, or it would simply loose money!

One day he was looking out over the yard and spied an entire crew, sitting on the pipe rack smoking cigarettes. What a waste of time and labor (and my money!), he thought as he stormed off to get things a bit more lively over there.

When he arrived at the particular rack he was met by 1 truck driver, 1 swamper, 1 forklift operator, and 3 yard crew employees, and no one seemed too upset that they were doing nothing. He asked them what was going on, and they replied "waiting on tallies!" The yard foreman (another man added to the total) had taken the pipe tallies to the office to add them up to see if they had sufficient footage loaded on the truck before they chained down and moved to the next job. Until they had the total footage of the material already on the truck (from the tally sheet) they wouldn't know for certain if they needed to take a few joints off or load a few joints more.

By now he was getting a pretty clear picture of an all too common example of how his costs were spiraling and his production was plummeting. He once again set off in a huff to the office to locate the missing yard supervisor and the desperately needed tallies. When he got to the office he found the supervisor (smoking a cigarette) seated in front of the billing clerk. The billing clerk was working at a feverish pace to add the tallies he had just brought to her. The logic of this scene was, the billing clerk was the most proficient with a ten key adding machine. Since the supervisor was slow on the ten key it would take him at least 15 minutes or more and she could do it in 4 or 5 minutes. The reality of the situation was that they had been "visiting" for 10 minutes already and still no pipe tallies!

What a waste of time and money!

In review, there was a total of 8 employees involved in this expensive exercise of tallying pipe and getting a truck out of the yard. The yard personnel sat idle for more than 30 minutes (counting the supervisor's travel to and from the office). The supervisor wasted almost 40 minutes shuttling paperwork and visiting. And finally the billing clerk, who should have been "billing", was tied up for almost 20 minutes (counting the non-solicited chit-chat). A direct expense of more than $90.00! Now consider the lost production during the procedure and the costs of tallying that single string of pipe could easily reach $400.00 or more.

A Better Way of Producing Final Tallies had to be Found!

That was when the Tally-Rite system was conceived and ultimately brought to life. An electronic method of measuring each joint accurately without common errors. Only 2 men are required for the process. They simply "strap" the pipe as they always do. But now, instead of writing the tallies on paper and adding them up they simply click a button, that's all there is to it.

With the click of a button the joint is counted, tallied, and the cumulative total is displayed on a readout in the operators hand. When they are loading 10,000 feet of tubing, they simply go as fast as they can (which is faster than they could when writing down each tally) and the display will update with each joint as to how many joints they have tallied, the footage of each joint, and what the total footage tallied is. Then they can either print a tally directly from the hand held unit or upload the data to a computer in the office.

Over the past 15 years we have enjoyed a partnership relationship with all of our customers. Without exception, each will tell stories of how Tally-Rite has saved them money and what a critical part of their operations it has become. In fact, we are proud to say, the very first customer that contracted for the initial proto-type is still using Tally-Rite units today!

Check out all of our Tally-Rite products. The TR-2000 standard pipe yard unit, the TR-7000 plant type unit, the Tally-Wheel, and our newest, patent pending, Tally-Lator units.

Of course please feel free to contact us for more information or to schedule a demonstration of the products.