Highway contractor S.T. Wooten has found an innovative way to deliver asphalt to its $420 million project to widen a section of Interstate 40 in North Carolina while still adhering to strict traffic requirements.
Haul trucks are limited to accessing the work zone between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. by interstate, so the company built a conveyor system over I-40 near Clayton that delivers hot-mix asphalt to the median where crews are paving. That enables asphalt delivery any time, which is especially helpful as the night-shift work is set to resume following the end of winter’s cold weather. Crews are set to work day and night to meet the tight deadline to complete the project by August.
“It's a huge benefit for us and the people traveling, too, as far as dump trucks getting in and out of the highway,” says project manager Matt Davis. “And it just makes it a lot safer.”
The 80-ton silo at the end of the conveyor supplies dump trucks with asphalt to feed the pavers.S.T. Wooten
Paving is occurring in a wide section of the median between the collection-distributor lanes Wooten has already built. Asphalt is sent up the conveyor from the plant over the interstate to the median. Dump trucks at the plant feed the hopper. At the end of the conveyor is an 80-ton silo where trucks in the median can fill up to feed the pavers.
The asphalt on the conveyor is in an enclosed pipe and is kept heated to the correct temperature for paving.
Davis estimates it took about a month to build the system, which was constructed in two phases to accommodate traffic. It’s about 280 feet long, 40 feet high and 8 to 10 feet wide. Davis estimates it will deliver about 150,000 to 175,000 tons of asphalt “that essentially we can haul without impacting traffic whatsoever.”
