Ultra-wide AggreScreed solves unique problems
In 2004, Myron Mullett was working on a government contract job that required his excavating company to lay 90 miles of gravel. “In order to meet the tolerance they gave me, I would have had to drive three rows of stakes for all of that distance,” he said. “I thought ‘there must be a better way’.” So he began to explore the possibility of designing a blade that would maintain gravel precisely without the need for stakes. “I asked people in the industry what they thought of the idea and they kept bringing up why it wouldn’t work,” he says. “So I tried an inexpensive prototype. And it worked way better than we ever thought it would.”
That was five years and three prototypes ago. Now, TerraTec’s AggreScreed is set to change the way roads are built.
“Today, in spreading gravel companies use a blue-top staking system,” said TerraTec Industries’ CEO, Myron Mullett (on right in photo above). “To use the AggreScreed you don’t have to place any type of gravel staking in order to accomplish your proper thickness. The AggreScreed will ensure that with minute details. The biggest change is that it’s a stakeless process.”
That’s a very big change. Attachable to virtually any bulldozer (though a 125- to 250-horsepower-sized dozer is recommended), the 16-foot AggreScreed blade adjusts to 24 feet in two-foot increments. It’s capable of laying gravel at any depth from zero to 15 inches and can even create up to a three-and-a-half percent crown in a single pass. That means huge potential savings in labour and equipment costs.
TerraTec COO Tim Lorenzen (on left in photo above) says that with a projected cost of $65,000, the AggreScreed “is basically paid for in less than 10 miles of laying gravel road. “It doesn’t tie up a dozer for the whole day either. So you can fully utilize the dozer and the operator. You can attach and detach this blade in approximately 15 to 20 minutes.”
Lorenzen says you don’t sacrifice quality for speed. “The AggreScreed lives up to it’s name,” says Lorenzen, “it performs like a screed. And it takes variables – like operator experience – out of the mix. The slope is perfect and there are no dips.”
Mullett believes the AggreScreed can also be used on bulldozer stockpiling applications as well. “You just add the AggreScreed to your dozer blade and you can increase productivity by two to three times, stockpiling wood chips, fertilizers, coal and other lightweight materials,” he says. Plows fixed to skids on each end of the blade keep materials in front of the apparatus, so it takes fewer passes to move material.
AggreScreed provides many benefits for laying down gravel, the company states.
• It does not require depth stakes. Potential savings in surveyor costs can add up to $2,000 to $3,000 per mile.
• It saves material costs. Most contractors are laying anywhere from 5 to 15 percent excess material to ensure they meet depth specifications. TerraTec’s AggreScreed will give them precisely how much material they need – nothing more, nothing less. Potential savings in materials can add up to $3,000 to $9,000 per mile.
• It can incorporate the crown in a single pass for a two-lane road. Contractors can save 15 to 20 percent in labour by reducing the time on a job and save on equipment costs due to less operational time. Potential savings can be estimated in the $5,000 per mile range.
• It lays down nearly a perfect road base using a screed-type process creating what resembles a new asphalt road behind it. Due to the nature of a screed, contractors will deliver a superior quality road, therefore improving their opportunities to secure future contracts while saving money at the same time. Minimizing and/or eliminating grading rework savings can only be estimated on a contractor-by-contractor basis.
• It attaches to a bulldozer that will typically already be on site possibly reducing the number of road graders in a contractor’s fleet, thus saving money.
• It can be operated by any dozer operator with minimal training, reducing the need for specialized personnel.
Additionally, says Mullett, the first of subsequent products will also appear in 2010. “We have at least three more products, besides the AggreScreed, that are coming,” he says.