To Calvin Thompson, owner and president of Dallas, GA-based Thompson Grading, the phrase “walk a mile in my shoes,” takes on a unique meaning.
For the past 34 years, Thompson has been walking through thousands of cubic yards of dirt, using some 70 pieces of his own industry standard crawlers, loaders and bulldozers to compact and roughen slopes — maintaining environmental guidelines — on his various construction grading projects.
But last summer, Thompson got tired of “walking.”
“One of my superintendents took a vacation and he asked me to fill in on a job for him,” said Thompson. “I found that anytime I needed a dozer for curb work, or pad grading, the dozers were being used for slope walking.”
On this particular job, there were several steep slopes, including a slope that was 120 ft. long and in the shade constantly. Thompson observed that it took one dozer 10 hours to pack and roughen the slope. With an unusually wet summer in 2005, when the rain fell, the dozers stood silent.
“Our dozers were spending so much time on slope packing…it was phenomenal,” said Thompson. “When I saw how much time it took that one dozer, I knew that we had a problem that needed to be liquidated.”
After thinking on it for a few days, and putting ideas on paper, Thompson created the Thompson Slope Packer.
The Thompson Slope Packer is an excavator-mounted roller, with chains that run parallel with heavy-duty cleats and roller bearings. Thompson explained that the chains have enough slack that they work between the cleats, which eliminates any carry back dirt clogging the roller.
The roller can attach and detach from an excavator or backhoe, and it has a self cleaning feature that eliminates carry back on wet days.
“It never lets the dirt pack…there is virtually no carry back, and when you pull it up airborne, and spin it, it effectively kicks the dirt off,” explained Thompson. “A bulldozer has a lot of build up, and on rainy days dozers couldn’t do anything…the Thompson Slope Packer can work in any weather conditions, especially rain.”
One of the more unique features is a long reaching hoe that can sit in one spot and do the up-and-down work of a dozer, by staying stationary, and it can pack and roughen right up to a silt fence, without destroying it. Available in lengths up to 8 ft., it can pack a slope in any condition and at any grade and in any direction, up to 26 ft.
“The day that the prototype came out, we went back out on the same 120 ft. slope and walked the slope in 15 minutes,” Thomspon said.
Because a greater distance and larger area are covered with the new slope packer, Thompson explained that if the slope packer is used properly, a construction manager can let a grading job go three or four days, before having to do slope walking.
Once Sam Pratt — owner of Rockland Manufacturing in Bedford, PA — took a quick look at Thompson’s invention, he decided to sign on to market the slope packer through his company.
“Sam Pratt saw it work for 10 minutes, and he was sold…he said ’I want it and I want it now,’” added Thompson.
Thompson said business is booming, and that construction workers are “fighting” over his new invention, and he is excited at the prospect of dreaming up new ways to innovate the grading business.
But amidst the excitement of it all, he maintains a certain humility and he hasn’t lost sight of why he’s in the business in the first place.
“I’ve seen all kinds of things. I’ve seen the grading business go from using cable machines, to hydraulic machines, from never having excavators, to having excavators, from dump trucks to rock trucks, he said.
“It’s just an exciting industry, where you can watch things develop and watch young people come up, and all the changes that go along with the grading business…this is just exciting to me.” CEG
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