On 15/06/14 14:04, Richard Aiken wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 8:32 AM, sjard <sjard@emerytelcom.net> wrote:
>
>>   But the crawler types don't have feed for  a standard dump truck feed
>> (where the truck would back up and dump into the hopper), most of the large
>> ones have a precursor vehicle that the trucks dump the hot mix into a line,
>> then this other thing (don't know what it's called, never worked with one)
>> then picks up the long thin pile of hot mix and uses a conveyer belt thing
>> to move it to the hopper.
>>
>> Also, there are mobile mix plants for jobs that are far enough away from a
>> static plant.
>>
>>
>>
> I've only noticed the conveyor belt whatzits used out on the interstates.
> Never on the county roads. I *have* noticed that the crawlers on the county
> road jobs have hoppers - as well as the fenders to either side of these -
> caked with a fair amount of asphalt overspill. Given that these are local
> "good ol' Southern boys" doing the road work under contract (meaning that
> the less machinery they use, the higher their immediate profit margin), I'm
> willing to bet cash money they simply skip the conveyor-belt whatzits for
> the county jobs.
>

Over here in the UK, the standard tarmac/asphalt layer is the Blaw Knox,
as pictured on the Wikipedia Blaw Knox page.  The hopper is, indeed, not
big enough to take a full dump truck load so the dump truck backs up to
the hopper and then reverses with the layer as it spreads the asphalt.
Even on the motorways, this is the only method of transferring from dump
truck to spreader I have ever seen used.

My father used to be one of the team in charge of all civil engineering,
including road resurfacing, for our local council and I got to see a lot
of this stuff during school holidays :-)

David Shaw