Prince Contracting used a DoMor Rivinius R600C grading attachment on the blade of its Caterpillar D-6T Tractor to speed up the process of spreading road base material on a 7.5-mile segment of a four-lane highway. The company used to average less than 2,000 linear feet of base using a traditional dump-spreading method. Using the DoMor Rivinius R600C, Prince Contracting was able to increase daily road spread to 3,400 tons of base material and 3,200 linear feet of graded and compacted base that passed inspection.
Prince’s Crew Chief, Harold Gilliam, a 25-year veteran of the road construction industry, was responsible for making sure that the road base material was correctly and efficiently installed. While Gilliam comes from the world of using the older “dump spread” method of spreading base, once he saw the time and money savings that the DoMor R600C provided he was hooked for life.
“I wouldn’t want to provide a graded and compacted base on any road without using the R600C,” stated Gilliam “It would take me twice as long without it and would cost more than $1,000 per day more with machine and operator time.
“It used to take our motor grader nearly three days to complete what the R600C gets done in one day. I have been in road construction for a very long time, and I haven’t ever had a more predictable and consistent method for installing road base than with the R600C,” he exclaimed.
DoMor says that contractors traditionally “dump spread” or dump directly from the truck onto the sub-grade with the truck moving slowing forward. This is the most common method used in road construction but it’s very inconsistent as far as the depth of base dumped along the finished sub-grade. Dump spreading comes with a host of challenges to get the base to exact grade and compaction to pass inspection. Contractors experience road base material waste and segregation because of the need to re-grade material thre to five times to get the grade right. The more the material is worked, the more difficult it is to compact.
With the DoMor Rivinius R600C base-spreader attachment, road base material can be quickly and accurately installed at depths from two to 22 inches, and widths of up to 16 feet in one pass. The R600C quickly attaches to a dozer or loader and can be set up and operational on a jobsite in 20 minutes.
