“We debated among ourselves for a long time before making the decision to purchase our new Blaw-Knox PF-5510 paver,” said Northwest Georgia Paving Company’s Edward Smith. “I long had the feeling that a tracked paver would be the best for us even though we had received very good service from our rubber-tired PF-200B machine. I felt that the rubber track machine would give us just a little more stability. In the end, that is the way we went and we have been well pleased with it so far.”
Northwest Georgia Paving Company Inc. is a third generation, family-owned asphalt paving company from Calhoun, GA. It was incorporated by Sherman Shepherd in 1958. When he and his wife, Elizabeth, died in 1980, the reins of leadership were passed on to their daughter Sharon. She and her husband, Ed, recently sold the company to their son, Russell Smith. At that point, Sharon retired, after serving as company president from 1980 to 2000. Ed Smith still remains with the company as vice president.
The torch and the challenge to continue the firm’s profitability and growth have been placed in good hands. Russell Smith is a construction management graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and, as the Georgia Tech fight song goes, “a hell of an engineer,” having graduated with honors. He and his wife, Bonnie, have a two year old son, Russell Shepherd Smith Jr. who is already being spoken of as fourth generation company leadership.
Northwest Georgia Paving works in an area of approximately a 35 to 40 mi. radius from its headquarters. The company’s work centers on highway paving, road resurfacing, and road rehabilitating. The company also does commercial and private sector paving, and engages in grading and pipe work when called upon. Its equipment spread encompasses several asphalt pavers, with Blaw-Knox being in the majority. The company has various rollers including two Ingersoll-Rand DD-110 models.
Many asphalt paving contractors will still say that they work from “can to can’t.” Meaning that crews work from first light until the sun sets in the evening. In the case of a recent Northwest Georgia Paving job, the company’s first nighttime paving project, crews worked “can to can;” from the last hours of daylight before the summer sun went down until the sun came back up the following morning.
“We were milling and resurfacing a 3-mi. long stretch of U.S. Rte 41, which is the main route through downtown Calhoun,” explained Ed Smith. The contract specified that we get on the road no earlier than 7 p.m. and be clear of it by 5 a.m. In between those hours, mainly of darkness, we had to maintain two-way traffic. This was no small task because that’s when the majority of the 18-wheelers come through town. Traffic only slows down a little after midnight, becomes real slow after 2 a.m. and picks back up again after 4 a.m.”
Ed Smith went on to explain that, the first thing the company did was to mill 1.6 in. (40 mm) of old asphalt from the road. “We subcontracted this to Douglas Asphalt Co. and that took a full week. We hauled the millings away with our own trucks and will eventually recycle it into our commercial work. then we came back, swept the area clean, and put down a tack coat,” said Ed Smith.
Smith’s crews then used a Blaw-Knox PF-200B to put down a .5- to 1-in. (1.3 to 2.5 cm) thick leveling course. This was followed by the company’s new Blaw-Knox PF-5510 with a 1.5-in (3.8 cm) thick, 165# course of .5 in. (1.3 cm) Group 2 (granite aggregate) asphalt. “When we ordered the new PF-5510 paver, we specified that it have the optional mixer-agitator device in the hopper. This has reduced the tendency of asphalt segregation and contributed to laying a more uniform mat. To that end, we have also trained our operators to never stop their pavers. Even if they have to slow down between loads, they should always drive up to and pick up the truck while maintaining some slight headway. This makes for a much smoother mat with no dips to be ironed out later with a roller,” Ed Smith said.
The job required about 7,500 tons (6,750 t) of mix. Northwest Georgia Paving bought aggregate from Vulcan Materials at the Bartow plant in Cartersville, approximately a 30-mi., one-way haul. “We did this with our own tandem trucks, which haul 19 tons each. Because the project was being done just prior to the Easter Week celebrations, there was heavier than normal downtown shopping traffic and it was imperative that we be finished prior to that holiday weekend,” added Ed Smith.
Compaction of the new asphalt in the midtown portion of the project was something of a problem. Because of old existing underground water and sewer pipes, Northwest Georgia crews were not permitted to use its DD-110 rollers in the vibratory mode. The static mode, of course, required additional passes to achieve the same densities. This was, according to company management, somewhat compounded during the middle of the night hours by rapidly falling temperatures and high winds which dissipated heat from the mix. State DOT inspectors closely monitored the compaction and took core samples.
The project started off with a 26-ft. (7.9 m) wide two-lane road section. This opened up to a 60- to 70-ft. (18.3 to 21.3 m) wide road where it goes through the downtown center of Calhoun. The PF-5510 was set to pull two 13-ft. (3.9 m) wide sections at first, and then reset to pull 12-ft. (3.7 m) wide passes through town. A 30-ft. (9.1 m) mobile reference beam was used as were other Blaw-Knox electronics.
Safety was paramount on this project. Rolling flagmen, certified by the Georgia DOT, went right with the paver. There was a twofold benefit to this operation. The first, of course, was public safety for the motoring public and the heavy commercial truck traffic. The second benefit was to enable the contractor to get his own dump trucks in and out of the work area safely.
“We worked very hard to set up a satisfactory traffic control program. The job didn’t have all that much tonnage, but it was on a heavily-traveled road and did go right through the center of town. Being a hometown contractor, of course, everyone knows us and expects the best,” continued Ed Smith.
(This preceding article appears courtesy of Blaw-Knox.)
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