by Jon M. Casey
Earlier this year, we had the opportunity to visit a couple of Brox Industries paving projects in northeastern Massachusetts. Riding with Contracting Division Manager, Greg Mackenzie, we stopped at a highway paving project on Route 1A in Newburyport, MA before moving on to the early phases of a second project in West Newbury, MA. Along the way, we traveled on a section of Interstate 495 between Haverhill and Salisbury that exemplified the quality of workmanship that goes into a Brox Industries paving job.
Mackenzie, who has served as the Brox Contracting division manager for the past seven years, said his division has four paving crews, with approximately 75 people employed throughout the division. Brox’s team has earned the company four national awards from the National Asphalt Paving Association (NAPA) for the quality of their work. They use some of the latest equipment and techniques in the industry.
“We do subcontracting on some of our jobs and we serve as General Contractor on others, depending on the project at hand,” he said. “We do paving in Massachusetts and in New Hampshire contracting for all kinds of work. We do private jobs, subdivision paving, condominiums and big box stores.”
“We have done work at Logan International Airport including runways and taxiways,” he added. “Our facility in Dracut, MA, with its high tech drum plant, is capable of producing up to 450 tons of hot mix an hour. We also have a six ton batch plant, which is capable of producing up to 280 tons of hot mix an hour. With these two units we operate one of the largest capacity operations in the Northeast.”
Mackenzie said that they have been innovative as an industry leader in a number of ways. They were early to implement nighttime paving as a way to help make motorist’s travel less troubling during the daytime hours. Today, contractors all over the U.S. do nighttime paving as a matter of routine.
“We will be doing a rotary project at night in the coming weeks,” he said. “We will have a 10 man crew on that job with a paver, three rollers, a transfer machine and 13 tri-axles to deliver the paving material. As we’ve done at this intersection, where it is necessary we will use live bottom trailers for easier unloading in places where a conventional dump would not clear overhead. We used live bottom trailers when we did paving in the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston.
Mackenzie said they will be doing a project for the Mass DOT as a General Contractor. “We have a 120,000 ton project on I-95 in Massachusetts that starts at the New Hampshire border. That project is 10 miles of paving.”
As we passed through West Newbury, a crew was doing prep work on the sidewalks and driveways that lined the roadway of an upcoming street paving project. Workers were busy removing old sidewalks and curbs in advance of the five mile roadway paving segment, scheduled to take place in mid-June.
“We will be doing five miles of road resurfacing on this project,” said Mackenzie. “These workers are doing a lot of the preliminary work before the main paving crew does the roadway.”
For more information about Brox Industries, visit their website at www.broxindustries.com or give them a call at 978-805-9719.