With the winter months upon us, local authorities will be bracing themselves for a wave of new potholes. Councils in England and Wales repaired almost 1.7 million potholes in 2020, according to the AA, yet a further 900,000 were reported the following year. The 2022 ALARM survey also suggests that there are £12.64bn worth of outstanding road repairs in England and Wales, equating to a nine-year backlog.
Traditionally, councils have had to provide a team of operatives, with a road planer, cutting saw, hydraulic breaker and a sweeper, to undertake a permanent road surface repair. Or they simply carried out a ‘throw and go’ temporary repair. To combat the problem, JCB developed the Pothole Pro; a single machine that can cut, crop and clean the area ready for resurfacing, massively increasing productivity and cutting costs.
Quick to embrace the solution is Dawsongroup | emc, which has just invested in a fleet of six Pothole Pros and become JCB’s national rental partner – making the machine available for contract hire for the first time.
The company’s investment follows purchases by a string of councils, who are reaping the benefits of buying Pothole Pros – with one authority even winning awards for deploying the new technology to tackle its pothole backlog.
The Pothole Pro can prepare up to 250m2 of road surface in a shift, with the average repair taking just eight minutes to prepare, at a cost of around £29/m2. That represents 5,000m3 or 700 potholes per month. This incredible productivity makes the JCB Pothole Pro very popular with councils and Tier 1 highway maintenance contractors.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which carried out much of the early testing with JCB, managed to complete almost seven years’ worth of repairs in 12 months with its first machine.
‘We’ve been able to fix 7,000m2 of patches in just 80 days,’ said Cllr Daniel Jellyman. ‘Using traditional methods this would have taken 758 days.’
Their pioneering use of the machine has been rewarded with two prestigious industry awards. The partnership won the Judges Merit Award and was Highly Commended in the Safety and Innovation Project of the Year category at the annual Institute of Highways Engineering Mercia Branch Awards.
The Pothole Pro can be purchased through JCB’s UK network of dealers, with flexible finance options available through JCB Finance. It comes with a five year/4,000-hour warranty for peace of mind. Alternatively, they can be rented through Dawsongroup | emc.
JCB is also working with Dawsongroup to offer councils and contractors two weeks of free operator training for the rental machines, including CPCS certification, ensuring productive use with no additional financial investment for the customer.
‘The Pothole Pro is an innovative machine which is both time and cost-effective,’ said Dawsongroup | emc managing director Glen Carruthers. ‘Our investment gives local authorities and contractors access to the best machines for the job, without the need for major financial outlay.’
Based on JCB’s Hydradig 110W wheeled tool carrier, the Pothole Pro is three machines in one. Fully road legal, it requires no expensive transport to travel to site. It comes equipped with a planer with integrated dust suppression and side-shift adjustment, allowing the operator to mill a full carriageway width without having to relocate the machine.
A JCB Multi-Tool incorporates a hydraulic cropper and a sweeper/bucket. The cropping tool eliminates the need for a floor saw, or a hydraulic or pneumatic breaker, providing a clean cut to the hole’s edge. With no manual cutting tools or pneumatic hammers, the Pothole Pro eliminates any risk of Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome.
By rotating the multi-tool, the operator can then clean up the repair with the sweeper and tip the material into a waiting truck. As the machine can rotate within a single carriageway, there is no need to close additional lanes to load into the truck. The operator can change tools without leaving the cab, reducing risk to operatives.
While many councils will find plenty of road repair work for the Pothole Pro throughout the year, the tools can be replaced with a variety of attachments, to provide a powerful, highly manoeuvrable machine that can undertake a number of other jobs, including stump grinding, grass mowing, hedge trimming and trench digging, to further boost return on investment.
This article first appeared in the winter issue of LAPV. To subscribe for free click here.
