Skip to main content

Repair the wear in historic Béarn

The former province of Béarn in south-western France is tucked away on the eastern side of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Steeped in history, its strategic location controls access to easy passage into the Pyrénées Mountains, and it is said that during the Napoleonic wars, Wellington's army passed through 'the Béarn,' where it won an important battle at Orthez and set up a garrison at Pau on its way to Spain.
February 29, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
Laffitte's new Cat AP655D large asphalt paver at work in Lac
The former province of Béarn in south-western France is tucked away on the eastern side of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Steeped in history, its strategic location controls access to easy passage into the Pyrénées Mountains, and it is said that during the Napoleonic wars, Wellington's army passed through 'the Béarn,' where it won an important battle at Orthez and set up a garrison at Pau on its way to Spain.

Today, the area supports a rich combination of industry, agriculture, and tourism, and keeping the infrastructure up-to-date is, in part, the job of the family-owned Laffitte enterprise, which employs 40 people and specialises in utility and public works.

With the help of French dealer 2154 Bergerat Monnoyeur, Laffitte recently took delivery of a new Cat AP655D large asphalt paver with an AS4251C screed with electric heat option. The contractor selected the zrubber track undercarriage to handle a variety of paving projects. Laffitte already owned and operated Cat compactors and hydraulic excavators.

According to 178 Caterpillar, the capabilities of the MTS undercarriage were tailor made to fit the geographic variety of the region, which includes rolling hills, valleys, gorges and spectacular mountainous terrain.

The Cat paving machine commissioning crew, led by Bergerat Monnoyeur technical expert Jean-François Lahargou and three additional dealer technicians, delivered the paver and set it to work for a two-day period. Its maiden challenge was to complete a parking lot project and its entry point in the town of Lac.

Despite the heat, crews and dealer technicians completed hands-on, on site training in all machine functions, operation and maintenance. They worked together to lay down a 60mm asphalt mat for a width of 5m, learning machine functions along the way, and on day two, crews moved to another site to lay down a 50mm thick mat (width 5m) for entry roads to a canoe/slalom course.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Asphalt paving developments
    March 13, 2012
    US and European asphalt paving needs are different, but some firms are bridging that gap, reports Mike Woof. With a clear differentiation between the US and European asphalt paving markets, manufacturers from the latter are now developing machines aimed at the former. The US and European markets for paving machines have developed along very different lines. North American pavers are designed for high throughputs and high paving rates, having been designed to meet a need to build roads over long distances wi
  • High performance, high mobility of wheeled pavers
    February 14, 2012
    New generation wheeled pavers aimed at use in territories such as the UK, Italy, South Africa and Southern Germany are now coming to market. Pavers in these countries are often expected to be driven from one part of a site to another or for short distances, which is why the additional mobility of the wheeled machine is preferred in many instances over similarly-sized tracked models. This preference for wheeled units comes in spite of the greater stability offered by tracked machines. BOMAG, Caterpillar and
  • New racetrack benefits from new technology
    December 3, 2014
    The use of new technology has helped pave the way for a new US racetrack Saving construction costs and meeting tight tolerances, sophisticated technology has helped deliver a quality racetrack surface within tight time constraints. The National Corvette Museum (NCM) in Bowling Green, Kentucky, lies close to Interstate 65 and now features a brand new racetrack, constructed with the assistance of the latest machine control technologies.
  • Asphalt paver performs well on difficult roads
    February 15, 2012
    Italian paving contractor VARESCO has made good use of its new AP500E paver from Caterpillar Paving on two difficult jobsites. One was a confined site with an abundance of manholes. The other one featured a road with a slope so steep the transport truck trailers were covered to prevent material from spilling out the back. The confined site required paving of an access road leading to a residential area in Merano, a town of 38,000 in northern Italy.