Preserving Las Vegas' not-so-glittery side

Temporary lane tabs are applied and permanent striping is then put down approximately 10 days after the slurry seal has had time to cure.

Reimschiissel has established an efficient application process by equipping his slurry crew with three slurry machines. While one machine is applying a latex modified slurry (which is more resilient to the hot Nevada weather conditions), the other two are at the staging area being reloaded with the emulsion, water and aggregate required for the job. Typically, American's slurry crew can apply 35,000 yards of Type 1, 30,000 yards of Type 2 and 25,000 yards of Type 3 slurry in an eight-hour shift. But with perfect conditions, Reimschiissel's crew has applied as much as 74,000 yards of Type 1 slurry in a day.

Business growth

American Asphalt's maintenance division generates approximately $10 million in annual revenue from slurry, sealcoating and patching projects. While slurry seal represents the lion's share of American's maintenance business, catering to municipal accounts in Mesquite, Yuma, Henderson and Las Vegas, for residential sealcoating generates the largest number of jobs.

A sealcoating crew can apply 50,000 to 70,000 square feet of double coat sealer per day, and the demand for that service in many of the new subdivision developments around Las Vegas may lead to Reimschiissell adding another crew.

The advantage American has in aggressively pursuing sealcoating work is that it produces its own mineral-filled asphalt emulsion sealer. It also has two storage tanks — an 8,000-gallon tank and a 10,000-gallon tank, which allows it to produce and store different formulated sealers. Producing its own sealer is less expensive than paying the shipping costs required to bring in sealer from a supplier, and it also gives the contractor flexibility in producing sealer for a specific application. Some customers require more sand or more latex, and American can accommodate those requests in short order.

For Reimschiissel and American Asphalt, maintenance and preservation work is a natural fit for the full-line of services the contractor wants to offer, and the growth potential is obvious as more road agencies realize the benefits of investing dollars to preserve a road system. And while American is bidding on work in other states, the Las Vegas area remains its primary focus for growth.

"People in this area take great pride in how everything looks and they want their streets to look good as well," Reimschiissel says. "Agencies understand the benefit of using preservation as a way to not only keep their streets looking good, but also keep them in good condition longer. They now require developers to treat new roads (sealcoat) before releasing those roads over to the counties which will ultimately be responsible for maintaining them.

"When you have agencies taking that approach with a new road, you know they want to make that road last as long as possible," Reimschiissel says. "And that means we'll have plenty of work for a long time, and as the Las Vegas area continues to grow, we'll continue to be right there offering our services to help preserve the investments made in building and maintaining good asphalt roads."