Our safety is very important as we enter this time of year when the fall push begins to build. We are never too rushed to short cut and not do the correct procedure. We have had some incidents this season that were marginal as to whose fault it was. It still comes down to the "well, if we would of done it this way it wouldn't of happened" attitude where we check one more way, or get off of a piece of equipment to take a look at what needs to be done! Let's have the rest of the season be incident free!

Wirtgen Stabilizer on Scott Co. Project
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Subdrain, Sealcoat, Stabilization Dept.

Bob and the subdrain crew have been steady up to now. I have been having some holes open up in the schedule for them with weather delays and prime contractors changing their paving schedules. If we can get through the next 3 to 4 weeks we should have some late paving projects coming and pull a steady schedule into late fall.

One of the projects they did was in Waterloo on University Ave. They placed subdrain behind the curb on both sides of the road (see pictures). This was a tough project for this crew as it seemed like there were more utilities in the ground than dirt. We rented a vac-u-ator machine to pothole the utilities to help in the search and location. It uses a powerful water blast in an enclosed tube operated by hand. At the same time there is suction pulling the dirt and water back up into the trailer. It’s not that easy handling the tube, but it does save a lot of hand digging. We did have bad luck and hit one traffic cable, but I hate to think what it would have been like with out this machine. Probably would still be there hand digging. Even with this one incident you guys did a great effort in completing this tough project. Hats off to you all! Also, along with them, thanks to our troop of material trucks that travel with this crew. Traffic was a bearcat with 3 lanes in each direction. Great job guys!

I'm going to combine the sealcoat and stabilization crews as that’s pretty much what has been happening anyway. They started out working on our county and city projects that required stabilization and then covering with a sealcoat. One project that took even more help was the foamed asphalt project we had with Scott County. We enlisted the help of Lonnie White, Felipe Fonseca, Jeri Kibbie and Bill Fortner to help on this project with blading, compaction and road alignment. They also helped with the Benton County stabilization prior to Scott County. Thanks for the good help!

At this time Lonnie and Felipe are still traveling with Kurt on various projects. Most of these have been fly-ash stabilization. Late August and September will be full weeks of work for the two stabilizing machines.

The Scott County foamed asphalt project was a test section for their area (see pictures). The stabilized base was overlaid with a 4" hot mix asphalt. Everyone involved was very pleased with the results of the base. It cured out very fast, roughly 3 days compared to 2 weeks when using emulsions. Before the crew was even off the job, the locals were showing how hard the base was by spinning their tires on the surface. There were several visiting county officials to this project and it sounds like there will be some up coming projects in their area as they were impressed by the results of this project.

Virg, Jeremy and the sealcoat crew have been doing the usual core group of sealcoat customer we have. It has been down considerably as the budget strings have really tightened on the small towns. This crew could use 2 to 3 more weeks of work to have a full length sealcoating season. We have some options coming up with some fly-ash projects that could help fill the void.

I have been leaning on Virg more to help in the management of this crew and he has been helping my workload immensely! Thanks Virg! The other bright star of this situation is the leadership of Jeremy Rucker filling Virg's shoes of running the project. We have received several comments of praise for this entire crew in their workmanship. I would like to thank all of you for your professional attitude and safely doing every job better than anyone else!

The fall season will be here faster than we realize again. Remember school will be starting. watch for buses and children. The harvest will begin with slow moving agricultural equipment to watch for. Lets make sure we all come home to our families safe and healthy!