Heavy Equipment

This post is for all friends and family that might be a little curious as to what a Highway Heavy Contractor really does. I admit that I didn't know the half of it when I signed on, and the more I learn, the more I realize how "deep the rabbit hole goes." (to steal a quote from the matrix). Basically, we are one of many general contractors bidding for work encompassing the entire state of Texas, and usually with the Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT). The lowest bidder gets the job, and that means there is no marketing or sales dept.!! Thank goodness! Currently, our bread and butter are jobs including dirt and concrete, and because of a large inventory of cranes for a company of our size, that means bridges.

These two Lorraine cranes have a capacity to lift 100 tons! They are the larger of the two kinds we use (Bucyrus-Erie 30B's are the other - 30-40 tons). We use them for setting the bridge beams, lifting supplies/equipment on top of the bridge, pouring concrete (getting a concrete bucket where a concrete truck can't get to), setting forms and a multitude of other things.



Here is the bridge we're building in Clyde, TX (near Abilene). Currently we are setting 4"-thick concrete panels on top of the beams to give us a deck to work on. These will stay on and we will pour the finished concrete bridge deck on top later this month. This bridge is our longest to date at around 500 ft. long. We also built the dirt approaches to the bridge from the ground up - about 40 ft. tall and 500,000 cubic yards of dirt!



To move the dirt, we use a combination of off-road belly dumps and dump trucks hauling from land close by. They hauled non-stop during the work day for months to achieve the two earth-mountains on either side of the bridge.




Many times we will use this Komatsu PC300 to load the trucks, although for this job, we loaded with a Hitachi 550 and a Cat 375 b/c of their bucket capacity. This PC300 is our most common excavator and we would be lost without it. Just about every job we've done since I came to work for Earth Builders uses one. Plus, it's probably my favorite piece of equipment to run.

Well, I hope this brief introduction will help y'all out! Keep a lookout for more construction posts- I'll be running my first full job as Superintendent of, yes, another bridge!