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Two county districts in Oklahoma keep roads maintained and save time
and money using the Road Groom. Two county Commissioners in Noble County, Mark Sanders, District 1, and James Gregg, District 3, are keeping their aggregate roads better maintained and saving money at the same time. Each Commissioner has purchased a Road Groom, a piece of equipment designed to maintain loose material road beds faster and cheaper than a conventional road grader, and with less stress on the road bed. The Road Groom helps to shape and crown a road. As Mark states, "It helps to reclaim. It redistributes serrated blends and mixes them with the fines. It puts the material on the road beds where they belong." The front cutting blade on the Road Groom cuts down the high spots and loosens the roadbed while reclaiming and rock that has been pushed below the surface. The blade on the side wing pulls gravel from the edge of the road towards the center. The back catch area blades then distributes the materials across the road and fills in the low spots. In addition, the Road Groom has two, four foot magnets at the front that pick up metel objects from the road. Mark states that every time they take the Road Groom out, they come back and fill a half of a two-pound coffee can with nails, hunks of metel and other metel items such as pliers and screws. Mark says that the Road Groom, however, is not meant to entirely replace a grader in the county shop. The grader is still needed to build roads and perform other heavy-duty work. The Road Groom offers the ability to maintain roads in the county quickly, more cost efficiently, and with less manpower. Mark says the two districts have had the Road Groom for almost a year now, and they "are very impressed with what they do." Mark estimates that he has pulled his Road Groom over 5000 miles during the past year. James particularly likes the way the Road Groom can help with washboarding and water retention on the roadway. As he says "sometimes you will have gravel, then another low track. The water settles in those tracks. With the Road Groom, you can redistribute the gravel and smooth out the road bed, which eliminates the water lying in the roads. And, because the Road Groom shapes and crowns the road, you have optimum water runoff." Mark says his goal is to save enough money from using the Road Groom to upgrade his older graders to new equipment. "That way I can spread my dollars over less graders." James says that he would like to have three Road Grooms. Then he could cover all of his roads in a few days. Two County Commissioners in Jackson county have also purchased Road Grooms. Ricky Crouch, District 2, and Dale Dunn, District 1, have had their Road Grooms for about one year. Ricky says they have benfitted from them "as far as just grading roads much faster than a road grader. They are also less expensive to run." Ricky pulls his Road Groom with a "little 80 horse-power John Deere tractor." He says, "you can pull it faster than a road grader can grade it." "What I have seen in the last month or two with the moisture, it has done a good job, escpcially on the gravel roads." |