Skip to main content

Big production

High quality standards and high quality equipment have led to one company building a strong market share in a part of the US with high requirements on finish. The Pavement Maintenance Division of American Asphalt and Grading is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, but is highly active right across the states of California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona. This operation is run by Eric Reimschiissel and was established as a division from the parent company in 2001 and has since grown to have two paving/patching crews, two s
March 14, 2012 Read time: 3 mins
Las Vegas demands high quality standards for slurry seal repairs used on its streets
RSSHigh quality standards and high quality equipment have led to one company building a strong market share in a part of the US with high requirements on finish.

The Pavement Maintenance Division of American Asphalt and Grading is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, but is highly active right across the states of California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona. This operation is run by Eric Reimschiissel and was established as a division from the parent company in 2001 and has since grown to have two paving/patching crews, two slurry seal crews, four seal coat crews, a crack seal crew, and a striping crew. One of the crews laid over 4,690tonnes of black paving in a 10 hour period and the firm uses 360 VSS Macropaver to meet its high production needs, saying that these have proven productive, reliable and durable, as well as delivering high uptime and low downtime.

Quality is important in cities such as Las Vegas as Southern Nevada has many requirements from agencies that are stricter than other areas due to fast growth. Because Las Vegas is a major tourist attraction, the city expects streets and public lots to be in good condition. Reimschiissel said, "Officials will come out and look at a patch you do in the street. They are stricter than any other place I have worked." Some of the requirements for asphalt quality include neat seams and having to grind off oil spots. Crews also have to be neat and make sure nothing is left on the kerb line. "If you get anything on the curb line, you have to clean it off," Reimschiissel said. "Here they also have dust requirements." The firm has used the machines to good effect on a key contract in Las Vegas. "We were low bidders on the City of Las Vegas slurry seal project, which as far as I know is the largest slurry seal project ever bid in the nation," Reimschiissel said. "It's a five year renewable contract. They lay type 1, type 2, and type 3 slurries, mostly type 1 and type 2. They are laid on residential streets. We do somewhere between 10-20 streets a day." The firm carries out an array of services and solutions for asphalt pavement maintenance, including slurry seal, seal coating, crack sealing, asphalt paving, asphalt repairs, and pavement marking and striping. All in all, the operation lays some 293,000tonnes of asphalt on highways, city streets, subdivisions, and homeowner association streets, as well as paving commercial, industrial, and residential parking lots.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Solar roads such as Colas’s Wattway could be the right way
    May 10, 2016
    Peter Harrop, chairman of independent research and consultancy IDTechEx, considers arguments in favour of solar roads. Nowadays a major trend is the move to off-grid clean energy created by “energy harvesting” to produce electricity where it is needed. This is more controllable and increasingly at lower cost than grid power or diesel gensets, cleaner and often less subject to interruption. It is taking new forms as revealed in the IDTechEx Research report, “High Power Energy Harvesting 2016-2026”.
  • New non-destructive testing technologies for roads and bridges
    July 11, 2018
    Two new technologies for non-destructive testing offer key benefits, one suiting road surfaces, the other suiting concrete structures - Kristina Smith reports Dynatest has developed a new way to measure and record the state of pavements, using a machine that travels at the same speed as traffic. The Rapid Pavement Tester (Raptor) has been seven years in the making and offers road owners the chance to have comprehensive surveys without the need to disrupt traffic. “People have been wanting to do this for
  • Silver Star marries a Topcon GPS system to a Power Curber 5700-C
    January 19, 2016
    In the US state of Oklahoma, Silver Star Construction has adopted 3D technology for site modelling and stringless machine control The company, based in the town of Moore, recently used a Topcon Millimeter GPS system mounted on one of their Power Curber 5700-Cs to put down nearly 5,500m of curb and gutter in a residential housing addition in south-west Oklahoma City. Once the dirt work and grading was completed, the concrete crew got to work by mounting the Topcon receivers on their 5700-C. The Topcon
  • Balanced Mix Design in the US could revolutionise pavement design and testing
    April 30, 2018
    Roads in the US keep failing so the Federal Highways Authority is proposing a new approach to mix design, but what does this mean for tests and testing? - Kristina Smith reports How do you test an asphalt mix for rutting? In the US, the answer could be any one of several tests, depending on which State you are in: Asphalt Pavement Analyser, Flow Number, Hamburg Wheel Tracking Test, Superpave Shear Test or Triaxial Stress Sweep Test. But that could all change. The Federal Highways Agency (FHWA), part of