Air Force: Buffalo Turbine

“We move large amounts of air,” Brad Wesley, who handles Product Sales for Buffalo Turbine, says, but after speaking to him for five minutes, it is clear that the company does much more than that. Established in 1945, Buffalo Turbine, located just south of Buffalo, New York, offers an extensive line of debris blowers that can handle an even more extensive line of services.

Wesley puts the Cyclone KB4 Debris Blower at the top of Buffalo Turbine’s bestseller list. It has a 27 HP Kohler engine and operates from a wireless remote control. Another item sure to be a bestseller is the BT Mega Debris Blower, which the company is getting ready to unveil. It has a 40 HP Kohler engine and the highest blowing power than any other single stage Turbine Style blower on the market.

Wesley says the need for the BT Mega Debris Blower arose from their relationship developed with the PGA Tour which began in the 90s. Now, Buffalo Turbine is an officially licensed product of the PGA Tour. They are also the official debris blower for the International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) and are the preferred debris blower of the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). Services the company performs on these jobs include removing debris and water from race tracks, dragstrips, roadways, parking lots, trails and cart paths.

Buffalo Turbine also supplied the United States Military with hundreds of blowers used for uncovering Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the United States Forest Service uses Buffalo Turbine’s KB blowers to keep firelines clear. Not wanting to turn the lines into a roadway and disrupt the earth, which would happen if a bulldozer was brought in to do the job, the KB blowers clear away leaves and debris while leaving the top soil undisturbed. Firelines are areas cleared of vegetation used to break the path of or slow a fire. They are also used as trails to move equipment and personnel through the forest in the event of a fire so keeping the earth intact is crucial.

For nearly a decade, Buffalo Turbine’s blowers were used on and around a number of professional football stadiums. Applications include drying paint on fields, clearing light snow, cleaning debris after halftime shows and drying parking lots. Sporting events and forestry aren’t the only industries Buffalo Turbine caters to.

Pavement sealers also find use for Buffalo Turbine’s blowers. “They’ll use them to blow off debris prior to sealing or striping,” Wesley says. And as far as street sweeping applications go, Wesley knows of one municipality contractor who couples a blower with an edger, and can cover 16 miles of roadway in 10 hours.

Wesley’s also heard of blowers being used in place of sweepers for those hard to reach places in supermarket parking lots, for instance, such as outdoor stairwells and around air conditioning units. Sweepers mount a blower to the front of their sweeper truck and blow out the debris so that they can then sweep it up.

Buffalo Turbine offers PTO, gas, diesel, electric and hydraulic debris blowers. Their list of debris blower offerings continues to grow, as does their customer base. “Business keeps getting better year after year,” says Wesley, and so, it would seem, do their debris blowers.

For more information visit www.buffaloturbine.com or call 716-592-2700.

Story by Megan McClure