Steve Illingworth

Once again, the commercial crew will start out slow this year. We have some jobs on the books but nothing that lets us get out of the gate and stay steady; the reason being, there is work that needs to happen before our crew’s phase of operation, like cold-in-place operations, that won’t start up until the middle of May.

All of the towns are telling me that the money is just not there or they are going to wait to see what happens. This is the year the City of Newton is supposed to do their Asphalt program which can usually keep the plant and crew busy for 3 or 4 weeks (this is not going to happen).

I can usually count on the City of Grinnell and their asphalt patching program to get things started (this is not going to happen) at least until July when they get some funds available.

Things are not all gloom and doom. Once again, the Jasper County Engineer is going to put out another banner year. The County is working on getting plans out in July for 16 miles of subdivisions under County jurisdiction for major grading and paving. Also, a black bound base, crack and seat job, one East and one West of Monroe, worth about 36,000 Ton of mix.

Hopefully, with the Benton County job that Donn was awarded in the April letting, the portable crew will be busy and not take the commercial crews work away from them.

Sitting in this chair, you have to worry about work being yanked out of our hands from outside or inside sources.

The paving and plant crews will start out on little commercial jobs and will fit in the Poweshiek County (Ewart Rd) project when weather is fit to cold-in-place (26,000 Ton) along with the maintenance project we received in the March letting of 8,000 Ton.

If we can fill some of the gaps in between until Jasper County work lets (assuming we get that work), I think it is going to end up being a very respectful year.