Member Profile

Michigan Chloride Sales, LLC

402 W. Jackson Road St. Louis, MI 48880 (800) 286-7312 www.michiganchloride.com

by Meta Levin

Bill Kinney is proud to be part of what he describes as a “tight knit team” producing more than 50 million gallons of calcium chloride annually from four wells in the St. Louis, MI area.

Headed by Karen Van Dooren, the company president, Michigan Chloride Sales has 10 full time employees with 20 seasonal ones. Kinney, regional sales manager for the company, describes Van Dooren as detail oriented and aware of environmental concerns, working to ensure strict environmental rules industry wide.

The central Michigan company, which began in 1957, drills the wells one mile deep, lines their storage with heavy industrial plastic liners to protect the surrounding environment and pumps up enough to keep five million gallons on hand at all times. It is, says Kinney, “the largest supplier of liquid mineral well calcium chloride brine in the Midwest.”

Used for a variety of purposes, but best known to landscape contractors as a component of snow and ice control programs, calcium chloride measures 102 degrees F when it comes out of the ground. Michigan Chloride Sales stores it in tanks and open pits on site. It fits right into the snow and ice control business, where liquids are, says Kinney, “becoming a growing force,” because it allows the use of less salt, saving money and the environment.

In addition to snow and ice control, it is used by municipalities, counties and townships for dust control. It’s also used in mining. “We send it out in tankers all across the country,” says Kinney.

Michigan Chloride is located in St. Louis, MI to take advantage of what is known as the Sylvania Formation, a prehistoric geologic landform that dates back nearly 600 million years and runs through the Green Bay, WI area, through parts of Michigan and into Ohio. Underground water seeps through limestone and forms the calcium chloride. “Our production is at the heart of it,” says Kinney. “There aren’t a lot of companies like us.”

The company concentrates on bringing the calcium chloride out of the ground. “There are no contaminates in our product,” he says. “And it is environmentally friendly.”

Kinney signed Michigan Chloride up for ILCA membership about a year and a half ago. Although he has been with the company for four years, he has been in the business for 30 years, bringing industry knowledge to his job. He lives in northern Indiana.

In his free time, Kinney rides his Honda Valkyrie Sports, six-cylinder motorcycle throughout the state of Indiana and has a solo drive to the Gulf Coast planned for this summer. He also has a sailboat and restores old British sports cars.

He is the father of three adult children — one in the medical field, one a schoolteacher and one who does computer design.

He is proud of the Michigan Chloride products and boasts that the Michigan Department of Transportation has started a program using the company’s product as a liquid only method of controlling ice and snow on the roadways, in order to reduce contamination of lakes and rivers.

For snow and ice control, using the products takes some getting used to, but “once you try it, you are never going back,” he says.