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This year,
the asphalt crew will return early and busy. We have
approximately 3000 tons of carryover work from the 2004
season. The tons are spread out over two commercial
parking lots, an overlay for the City, and some patching
for Muscatine County. We also acquired another 3000 tons
of HMA as a subcontractor to Manatts on a white-topping
job in Cedar County, IA. We are looking forward to
working with Jason Spooner, Graham Cunninghame, and
their crews.
The pavement
maintenance side of the company has some local work to
begin the year. Larry Sammon and Larry Senger will be
applying CRS-2 on various roads and highways in Scott
Co., Linn Co., and Johnson Co. From there, Larry
Sammon’s crew will travel to Interstate 35 in Story Co.
where they will seal cracks for Tom Manatt and the Ames
Division.
Continuing the theme of working side-by-side with
our parent / sister companies, we are currently bidding
a substantial tennis court job with L.L. Pelling at the
University of Iowa. If all goes as planned, our tennis
court crew(s) may be extremely busy in a couple of
months!
We added a couple of pieces of equipment to our
fleet this year that should generate some smiles among
crewmembers. A 1997 Elgin / Ford vacuum truck was
purchased from Aspro. We intend to utilize this beauty
for a multitude of applications; from clean up behind
the mills to material clean up behind the crackfill
crews. We also recently purchased a new small CAT roller
from another Manatt acquaintance in Brian Manatt,
currently our Sales Representative with Altorfer in the
Quad Cities.
For the first time in Illowa’s history, we threw
together a group of guys to spend a few days at the
condo in Copper Mountain. The trial run was successful
enough to leave no doubt in our minds that this should
become an annual event. Next year, you will most likely
see some of us participating in the
Winter
X
Games on
ESPN. We truly
appreciate the opportunity to utilize the facility.
On March 24th,
2005, we will hold our annual Employee Safety Meeting.
We are limited to one day to cover a week’s worth of
information. To help compliment the material covered in
the meeting, we will rely heavily upon our
Superintendents to make their weekly toolbox talks
count. An event on our crackfill crew late last season
opened a lot of employees’ eyes regarding the
seriousness of even the most mind numbing of tasks. It
is imperative that we maintain our focus on safety
through each and every job we undertake.
Looking back on the 2004 season, we can learn a lot
from our accomplishments as well as from our mistakes.
Each season, our predominately young employees gather
what information they can from the few “experienced”
employees we have on staff. Our mistakes, our
accomplishments, and the knowledge passed down from the
generations before us, contribute to a continuously
advancing comprehension of the industry in which we
work. Have a SAFE and successful year!
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