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"Soon, in addition to the striping, we were also patching pot holes," he continues. "To do that, we bought mix from different asphalt contractors in the area, often having to haul it quite a distance to the jobs. In the summer of 1990, a local contractor was subbing out projects and asked if we wanted to do some highway approaches for him."

The logistics for the highway jobs were easy, says Long. The contractor was going to supply the mix; all Long had to do was put together a three- or four-person crew and do approximately 60 approaches.

"I felt we could do the work, so I took the job and in six weeks made more money than my annual salary as a teacher. That was a real eye-opener for me - as they say, the rest is history," he states. "We bought a small asphalt plant the next spring, I resigned my teaching job shortly afterwards, and I've been doing this ever since."

All about the plant

The asphalt plant to which Long refers was a 60 ton per hour (tph) ADM 5424 SPL. One of the smaller plants manufactured by ADM, it consisted of a split cold-feed bin, hot oil tank, portable asphalt drum dryer/mixer, oil burner and a 175 kW diesel engine generator.

"It was a 1987 model and even though I was still teaching school at the time, I flew to Paola, KS to look at it. Truth be told, I really didn't even know what I was looking at; I was just wet behind the ears," Long says. "But we bought it and it served us well for almost 20 years. In fact we still have that plant and, even though we've had offers, I'm hanging on to it, thinking we might use it someday as a remote system."