ForConstructionPros.com

After completing a major highway project in Central Florida in 1999, Ajax Paving Industries decided to move the portable 1984 Cedarapids 160-tph Standard Havens Low Rider to the South Ft. Meyers area (San Carlos Park) to test the market. The plant was never shut off, according to Robert Ray, asphalt plant manager for Ajax’s Florida Division.

“It’s been a very good plant for us and we would run from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. five days and sometime six days a week, but I found it very hard to schedule maintenance as the plant never stopped,” Ray states. “In Florida, you just don’t shut down a plant. The weather allows us to work on projects year-round.”

During 2006, Ajax was planning to submit a joint venture bid on a major 30-mile widening and resurfacing project. When Anderson Columbia and Ajax were eventually awarded the design/build Interstate 75 project, located between Naples and Ft. Meyers, the approximately 500,000 tons of hot mix required to build the project proved to be all the impetus needed for the asphalt producer/contractor to upgrade its production capabilities.

Because of the lane closure restrictions and tonnage required to keep the I-75 project on schedule, Ray and Vince L. Hafeli, vice president of plants and manufacturing, began searching for a more substantial plant to replace the portable Standard Havens.

“We began to evaluate the type of plant we wanted to replace the Low Rider,” Ray says. “The one thing we knew going in was that Meeker Equipment would be the manufacturer chosen for the liquid asphalt storage tanks and metering system, as well as the offload and feed system for our #5 waste oil.”