Across dozens of booth conversations with manufacturers, contractors, and product managers, a few consistent themes emerged. Equipment is becoming smarter, more connected, and increasingly tailored to specialized contractor needs.
At the same time, companies are focused on solving some of the industry’s most pressing challenges: labor shortages, quality assurance requirements, and the need to produce more work in less time and, often, with less available labor.
Here are some of the highlights from the show floor, organized by the areas contractors care about most.
Paving: Upgrades All Around
One of the clearest developments in modern paving equipment is the growing integration of automation and machine intelligence.
Manufacturers are increasingly equipping pavers with systems designed to assist operators in maintaining consistent paving quality while reducing the learning curve for newer workers.
That ethos was on prominent display at the Vögele booth, where their entire flagship "Dash-5 X" line of pavers were showing off a wide variety of included, automation and automation-ready features. The new "X" series is comprised of four models:
One really interesting feature that stood out to me was the Road Scan technology, which takes real-time measurements of the asphalt mat right off the screed.
"It takes a reading every four inches," said Brodie Hutchins, VP at Wirtgen Group. "As mixes get less hot, get drier and stiffer, with more RAP in them, you can see the actual temperature map behind you for QC purposes. You know exactly how hot it is. All of that data is on the machine, so you download it, and you can go back to the customers for the road, and show the temperature, number of passes, and now, with the smart Compact Pro on the rollers, we can show exactly what density we had at each pass. So it's like there's no guesswork."
Some of the newest highway-class pavers now include integrated systems capable of managing steering, width detection, and grade control. These systems allow the machine to monitor elevation, slope, and paving width through built-in sensors and control interfaces.
For contractors dealing with increasingly complex specifications and tighter tolerances, the ability to automate parts of the paving process offers real advantages.
Additionally, BOMAG's newly reimagined CR 1030 T-2 highway class paver was sporting a brand new screed called the Versa 16. The development and deployment of this new ultra-heavy screed came out of the newly integrated partnership of LeeBoy within the FAYAT Group of companies.
New, smaller paving machines were also drawing attention on the show floor. Weiler’s new P75 gravity-fed paver, for example, is designed to target contractors working in residential and light commercial markets. It sits alongside the full lineup for Weiler, now with six total options for contractors to choose from, whatever their jobsite requires.
The P75 incorporates a walking floor system that moves material toward the screed without requiring trucks to dump and pull away repeatedly. The result is smoother material flow and fewer interruptions during paving operations. That kind of design focus reflects a broader industry shift toward machines that solve very specific contractor problems rather than trying to serve every market segment.
As Weiler Sales Manager Nigel McKay explained, the goal was to build a machine that fits into the company’s lineup while serving contractors who need productivity without stepping into a much larger paving platform.
“The P75 is our newest addition into the gravity fed lineup,” McKay said. “It really complements the lineup for the contractor that wants to go out and knock out a bunch of driveways.”
One of the more interesting design choices involves a walking floor system inside the hopper. Instead of relying entirely on truck dumping to move material through the machine, the walking floor moves asphalt toward the screed in a controlled motion.
“The floor will actually walk back and forth,” McKay said. “So for receiving trucks, we don’t have to receive the truck, pull the truck away, and then dump the hopper. We can actually be moving asphalt to the rear similar to a conveyor system.”
One of the other pleasant surprises was stopping by the Blaw-Knox booth to speak with Jim Head, district sales manager for the company. He shared that their paving line-up was now running Cummins engines.
The company is also preparing for the next wave of machine technology.
“The next major road that we see in front of us is what we’re calling electrical architecture,” Head said. “It will give us the ability to put a little bit more technology on the pavers.”
According to Head, that development has been years in the making.
“This has taken us two and a half, three years… you’ve got to field test it and make sure it holds up.”
Among the paver manufacturers, there was a renewed focus on practical usability. Many companies are paying closer attention to the small details that affect how crews actually operate machines in the field. This makes sense in an economy that continues to be risk adverse. Fewer completely new models coming to market, and more focus on refining existent, known products.
This was no more evident than at the LeeBoy booth. Since the acquisition by the FAYAT Group, the team has done anything except rest on their laurels. Having just launched their own version of a four-ton asphalt hot box in the HB4T two years ago, VP of Product Development and Suppor, Chris Broome, walked me through the numerous changes and quality of life improvements. He emphasized that many of these design decisions came directly from contractor feedback.
“You’ve got to go out and use it,” Broome told me. “The contractors are the best people at showing you how you designed it wrong.”
But the really exciting piece of innovation they were showing was the new PR900 dual-tank distributor truck. It was primarily designed to solve a problem a lot of people might consider niche -- it is anything but that. One of the major limitations of open graded, porous asphalt mix designs, is that it cannot be treated with anything that might impact its porousness. This includes sealcoats or, in this case, rejuvenators.
The solutions comes in the PR900's fully stainless steel (non-reactive) dual-tank, dual-spray design.
"In the front, you put a rejuvenator, and the back holds a polymer," said Broome. "My rejuvenator comes out of the front bar which is straight, and the polymer comes from an angled nozzle about 18 inches later. That's going to lay a fine mist of this polymer over top of the rejuvenator. The polymer mist drives the rejuvenator into the asphalt, and helps it break."
Effectively, there is no other way to accomplish this application correctly. Not even if you ran two separate trucks, as the drive distance between them would not result in the same application results.
In terms of other paving support vehicles, Astec made a lot of contractors happy when they brought back the much beloved Roadtec SR-2500 Shuttle Buggy MTV. While the model had been previously retired with the release of the SR-3000, there was a lot of feedback from customers that the previous model had unique qualities contractors wanted. So, now both machines are available!
Compaction: Efficiency Through Intelligent Systems
Compaction technology saw, perhaps, the most dramatic leap forward in recent years, both in-terms of device type and product availability and usability. Manufacturers and technology companies continue to refine intelligent compaction systems that guide operators through the rolling process while collecting performance and other applicable jobsite data along the way.
Here's a non-total list of the "intelligent compaction" products I saw:
- BOMAP Connect + Asphalt Manager (BOMAG)
- SEISMIC on asphalt (Dynapac)
- Smart Compact Pro + Track Assist (HAMM)
- GPR Sensor integration for Roadworks (Trimble)
- Compact Assit (Volvo CE)
One of the biggest benefits of these systems is efficiency, while achieving that efficiency through, mostly, different means and approaches to the technology.
While there is some overlap, they all share the basic notion that roller operators should have more information about, not only their roller patterns, but the condition of the mat itself. Intelligent compaction systems can dramatically reduce unnecessary overlap, wasted time and fuel, and improve the final result in the process.
In some field demonstrations, manufacturers have seen efficiency improvements approaching thirty percent when operators use real-time compaction guidance instead of relying solely on visual or physical cues. For contractors, that translates directly into reduced fuel consumption, faster job completion, and improved mat consistency.
At the same time, manufacturers are also introducing machines designed for specific segments of the compaction market.
Dynapac launched what is currently the largest tandem break-down roller, by weight, currently available on the new equipment market in the CC7000 VI. This machine is an utter beast, and paired with the SEISMIC technology, it's like a scalpel and a jackhammer in one.
New options for those looking for rubber tire, pneumatic rollers or soil compactors were also common sights this year, gaining traction among commercial paving contractors looking for tools that improve finish quality on parking lots and industrial work, or enable them to tackle their own dirt work.
This included the single drum SD70 from Volvo CE, the static-tire non articulating TS160-4 from Sakai, and a pneumatic tire roller from BOMAG the BW18.
"We had a demand from customers that they wanted a more cost effective solution," said Foster Ladlee, product marketing manager for BOMAG. "They didn't need to ballast the 62,000 pounds [BW28]. They didn't need all that horsepower [of the BW28]. So, now we have the 18 available that's maxed at a 74 horse, no def bucket, Max ballast is now 39,000."
