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As the largest paving company operating in the Tampa, FL market without an asphalt plant, Pete Hernandez, president of Tampa Pavement Constructors Inc., decided the time was right to make the investment to own his own plant.

"We had become Tampa's largest FOB (Freight Onboard) paving company without a plant and we wanted to sustain our volume, and hopefully position ourselves for future growth," says Hernandez, who started the business eight years ago. "Our decision was based primarily on the fact that we couldn't always get the volume we needed when we needed it. It was a cost issue of having trucks (both company-owned and independent drivers) waiting for a load. If the wait was too long, we often had to send them to another plant (asphalt producer) and both situations caused delays for our paving crews."

Hernandez says Tampa Pavement Constructors focuses on a niche in the paving market, by serving private residential and commercial customers, and industrial customers, along with small city and county projects, and small DOT right-away projects. Along with sustaining the current volume for those customers, Hernandez also hopes the new plant investment will allow his company to take on larger city and county projects.

"We carefully thought out the decision to own our own plant based on our current volume of approximately 200,000 tons a year and the fact that owning a plant would also allow us to increase the volume of work by going after projects we couldn't deliver in the past," Hernandez says.

Selecting a plant
Hernandez evaluated several different plants and decided the ADM (Asphalt Drum Mixers Inc.) Milemaker MM225 Asphalt Plant best served the current and future needs of Tampa Pavement Constructors.