ForConstructionPros.com

If you think the Maytag repairman gets lonely, try working the territory home to Kamloops, British Columbia-based Dawson Construction, Ltd. For nearly 85 years, the Canadian construction and highway maintenance contractor has covered a market area focused on central British Columbia, ranging in size to more than 31,000 square miles.

This market is large in geographical size only. The sparsely populated region consists of about 500,000 people, averaging roughly 16 people per square mile. With only small, out-of-the-way towns like One Hundred Mile House and Burns Lake dotting the landscape, it’s a challenge for Dawson Construction to find a local source for asphalt.

“About 90 percent of the roads that fall under our highway maintenance contracts have no local asphalt supplier for the region,” says Gord Procknow, operations manager for Dawson Construction. So Dawson Construction’s crew has to take the asphalt with them.

The asphalt producer and paving contractor operates one stationary plant strategically located in the territory’s largest city, Kamloops. Since 1996, the company has traveled the region with a portable Terex PTD300, 300 ton-per-hour (TPH) asphalt plant, profitably paving projects in the 15,000- to 100,000-ton range.

But a new, 10-year highway maintenance contract covering the territories of Cache Creek to Williams Lake and Jasper to Blue River signaled a change in the size for some of Dawson Construction’s paving projects. With a number of the far-reaching destinations requiring less than 10,000 tons of asphalt, the company needed a portable plant that could be quickly and cost-effectively mobilized up to 500 miles for the small jobs.