Author name: Cliff Mansfield

It’s Sunday afternoon. The wife and kids flutter about the house, happy to have you home for a day after the grind you’ve endured– they’ve endured. For the first time in several months you can lay back and relax. Monday morning that new paving contract you’ve worked so hard to get ready for finally starts. […]

Mashing big rocks into little rocks. Crushers do this job well, if maintained and operated correctly. The products they give us are well suited to the task of building roads and satisfying the bureaucrats with their specifications. Drum mix AC plants use the stuff ‘as-is’ and don’t seem to suffer unduly. So why do we

Winter’s coming. And with it comes time to perform needed maintenance chores at the asphalt plant. When setting up a plan of attack some people find it helpful to use a checklist to determine which items need special attention and which ones need only regular servicing. What follows is the author’s inspection protocol, used to

Another winter is nearly here. With the paving season drawing to a close many companies’ thoughts are turning toward a winter repair regimen for their asphalt plants. It’s no secret in our industry that what you do to your plant in the off-season bears heavily on your success during the next paving season. Most asphalt

In an earlier article I talked about drier/mixer trunnion adjustment procedures. If followed, these procedures can go a long way toward restoring the functionality of your drier/mixer, hereafter referred to as the drum. There are instances, however, in which no amount of adjusting will correct the problems exhibited by a particular drum. Sometimes, the trunnions

Many asphalt plants suffer from trunnion and tire problems relating to misalignment and poor adjustment procedures. In past articles I have talked about various methods of repairs such as trunnion/tire grinding. When a plant is operated continually with its trunnions poorly adjusted the results can be devastating, requiring major repairs. Trunnion adjustment is a difficult

Take a 5’ drum plant and put it into operation at 6500 feet elevation, feed it aggregate with 6% moisture and you will soon discover that your production rate is down around 40 tph. Add a couple of decades of wear and tear and the production rate can get as low as 20 tph. This

In PART 1 we discussed lockout-tag out accidents, burner safety issues and the dangers of poor maintenance practices. In PART 2 we will address some of the other areas of potential hazards and the consequences of taking them lightly. Numerous other dangers lurk around a plant, awaiting the unwary. Electrical shock injury is common, as

Asphalt plants can be very dangerous places. Accidents, sometimes fatal, happen far too often. Most can be traced to the same root cause: the need for production superseding common sense and normal safety practices. The incidents that follow occurred in the western U.S. in a five year period. Sadly, they were not the only ones.

I’m often asked what the future holds in the way of asphalt plant design. Orson Wells’ vision of the future holds the view that cars will travel through the air. We all hope that’s a few decades off because it doesn’t bode well for our industry: I don’t see a need for roads in mid-air.