Randolph Road, Charlotte, N.C., is part of a big city resurfacing project now taking place and it shows how even a small part of a big project can take a lot of time and effort. The entire project, which started in June and is scheduled to end in October, involves 58 mi. (93 km) of road, 100,000 tons (90,718 t) of asphalt and costs $7.5 million.

Blythe Construction Inc., Charlotte, N.C., and Villager Construction, Fairport, N.Y., handled the Randolph Road portion of the project.

Richard Clark founded Villager Construction in 1979 and extended the scope of the business into milling in 1998. Villager services milling accounts in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and North and South Carolina. The work Villager can do varies from supplying just a milling crew to performing the milling, sweeping, and total cleanup in preparation for paving. After the paving is complete, Villager Construction also can install rumble strips.

For Randolph Road, a span of 3 mi. (4.8 km), Villager needed 11 men on site, including the supervisor and the full cleanup crew. The job began on July 9 and went on for two weeks as Villager removed asphalt at a depth of 2 in.

On this job Villager used one of the Wirtgen W-2100 mills from its fleet of 16 Wirtgen mills. Twelve of them are W-2100 mills with 700 hp (522 kW) and 7-ft. 3-in. (2.2 m) drums, three are W-1200 mills with 335 hp and 4-ft. (1.2 m) drums and one is a W-600 with a rumble strip attachment.

“We use these mills because they are the very best mill available, they have outstanding automation and they have the most horsepower per foot of drum of any mill on the market. Horsepower equals production,” said Todd Hartman, operations manager of the milling division.

In order to trim around steel structures in the road, Villager used a Cat 248 B with a milling attachment. Villager chose the Cat 248 B on the recommendation of its sister company, American Equipment LLC.

Once Villager had finished preparing Randolph Road, Blythe Construction took over to complete the paving work. The 3 mi. required 7,500 tons (6,804 t) of asphalt, gave work to 13 men and took from July 15 to Aug. 7.

Blythe favored the Blaw-Knox PF2181 paving machine on the Randolph Road project. The Blaw-Knox PF-2181 is a wheel-mounted, mid-sized, heavy-duty paver with new standard features, equipment choices and options. Key features include low-pressure tires, clamp-in conveyor floor plates, dual operator consoles and built-in easy slide auger tunnels. Working in tandem with the paver, Blythe used a Cat CB-534D roller on the job. According to Larry McCarley, project manager, both machines did a good job and there were no problems with either one.

Blythe Construction has been in business since 1921 working on public and private projects ranging from interstate highways to small commercial developments. Blythe has the capability of taking any size job from the design stage to smoothing the last layer of asphalt. CEG

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