It all depends on the area. At the county I work for, we don't do any paving, even though 4 of my coworkers used to work for paving contractors. We don't have the money for the equipment, or enough townships that have enough money to pay for the paving. The townships are financially responsible for the class "B", or local roads, and the Road Commission is financially responsible for the class "A", or primary roads. But, the Road Commission is the one that does the maintenance to the primary and local roads. We are also contracted with the state of MI to maintain the state trunk lines through our county, M57,M46, and US127. We don't do bridges either, we don't have cranes or the manpower to do them. We only do culverts under 48" as well. It used to be one driver per township, but to save money, we all take care of a township and a quarter now. For instance, in my territory, I have a total of 79 miles of roads to maintain, which actually means 158 miles when you figure both lanes for plowing, scraping, etc. Mine is about half pavement, and half gravel roads. So along with the territory is scraping roads, mowing (twice on blacktop,once on gravel per year), crack sealing, patching potholes, shoulder gravel on blacktop, hauling and patching gravel spots, cutting trees and trimming limbs, scraping for chloride, plowing snow (must be completely done in one work day). I also run the tack truck for chip seal, and the chloride tanker every other summer. We do have a backhoe operator, loader operator, and a sign guy that is used as a fill in when there isn't any sign work. It's amazing how many people have no idea what we are doing though. When crack sealing last week, a lady came out and asked why we were vacuuming the road. Then you have people that don't understand why you scrape the road so it is all dusty right before you spray it with chloride. 1) to fill in the potholes 2) you have to take the road "out" to get all the stones off the surface so you are spraying basically just the base material. Loose stones roll, tear up the chloride layer, shortening its life substantially. You will never make everybody happy, best you can do is just try to do a good job. People will tell you all sorts of stuff. The road is too bumpy, when there's only a couple potholes. The road is too smooth, people drive to fast. I don't want chloride on my road. I don't want a dusty road, put chloride on it. The townships all pay us as the contractor. We are exempt from hour limits unlike most CDL drivers. We are shorthanded so if we get a bad storm in winter, most of us will work in our territory all day, then come in and switch out our trucks for the state trucks and run on the state all night while the state guys get some rest. We are contracted by the state, so it MUST be done. We try to keep it under 16-18 hours, but sometimes we just sleep in our trucks in the barn to get the extra 45 minutes we would spend driving home and back. During a bad winter, we get many days of only 3-4 hours of sleep, but we are always told that if we need to get off the road, then just do it, don't be dangerous. Many people don't like to get called at anytime of the night and then drive for 45 minutes to go cut a tree off the road. The last one I did was at 2:30 in the morning, and I spent 3 hours cutting and dragging it out of the road. It was 2 36" maple trees that were tangled together and one was hanging about 25 ft up where it broke off the stump. Then other days you get called for several trees after a storm, work all night Friday night in the rain, then work half the day Saturday smelling like a wet dog. During winter, if we get called on a weekend, almost everyone comes in every time, unless someone is on vacation away from home. That way, everyone gets done at about the same time. If one person doesn't come in, it really screws up the rest of us because we have to do our work, and their work, but either way we work as a team to get things done as efficiently as we can. Today I started on my gravel roads "bringing them in" for winter. I'll probably scrape all of my gravel roads 3 times before it freezes. We bring in all the loose stone scraped off for chloride so it will pack back in and not get bladed off when plowing snow. We basically will just continue scraping our roads until they are all shaped up when it freezes so we don't have to plow pothole filled roads. I know my territory from memory, I know how to get it done in my 8 hour day. It MUST be done in a certain way at a certain speed, 40 mph when I can, or you'll never get it done in 8 hours. Every township is different, it all takes experience. We are on call 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
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Today's Featured Article - Good As New - by Bill Goodwin. In the summer of 1995, my father, Russ Goodwin, and I acquired the 1945 Farmall B that my grandfather used as an overseer on a farm in Waynesboro, Georgia. After my grandfather’s death in 1955, J.P. Rollins, son of the landowner, used the tractor. In the winter 1985, while in his possession the engine block cracked and was unrepairable. He had told my father
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