Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/662812
EquipmentWorld.com | April 2016 47 to clean up at various stages. This can include collecting millings after a milling machine has made its passes, touch up cleaning between paving courses, or even as a finish- ing touch after the final layer of asphalt has been set down. Eric Covington, vice president of DECCO Contractors-Paving in Rog- ers, Arkansas, says his company is considering buying its own sweeper truck because of the added utility of being able to clean up so quickly. "A sweeper truck is one of the things that's high on my wish list, because we finished up a state highway job south of our office here and we actually had to hire someone to come through and sweep the road," he says. They needed the sweeper truck because after laying a binder lift, surface lift, and a final surface lift on the proj- ect, DECCO ran a milling machine down the roadbed to make sure the cross slope was correct. "So we had a lot of very fine particles that, when you hit them with a power broom, they just kept moving". Only a sweeper truck would work. In that sense, power sweeping becomes a quality control measure. Covington says in addition to the final cleanup of a project, overlay work requires collection of particles that can accumulate. "There are a lot of times when you're doing an overlay project where you get those 'crumbs' in the gutter, particularly if it's a long project. You've got to sweep the road. That's exactly what those sweeper trucks are for." These machines have become si- lent partners in the paving process, partly because the work is often contracted out, as Covington de- scribes. Sweeping work has become such a big part of the business, that an educational session at this year's World of Asphalt show in Nashville was dedicated to the topic. Gerry Kesselring, president of Contract Sweepers and Equipment in Columbus, Ohio, was one of the speakers for a session dedicated to effective use of power sweeping equipment. He says work for pav- ing contractors is a significant part of his company's business. "Over an annual basis, it is ap- proximately 15 percent of our total revenue," Kesselring explains. "There can be parts of the year where it can run as high as 40 percent. Certainly at the end of the season when the asphalt plants are shutting down and everybody Mechanical sweeper trucks removing millings prior to new asphalt being placed on an Oregon highway. Photo: Oregon Department of Transportation