R.E. Pierson Responds to Demand

Mid-Atlantic asphalt producer adds heavy-duty facilities to better serve diverse customer base

Six cold feed bins and three RAP bins keep the plant well-supplied.
Six cold feed bins and three RAP bins keep the plant well-supplied.
As a leading Mid-Atlantic heavy and highway construction firm, New Jersey-based R.E. Pierson Construction Co. continues to invest in its asphalt production capabilities to meet the current and future needs of its diverse customer base. For over 35 years the company has built a strong reputation of serving residential and commercial site development customers, and has significantly expanded its expertise to serve local, county, state and federal agencies.

Company President Richard E. Pierson maintains a strong business focus on delivering timely, efficient and responsive services to all clients, and that focus has generated significant growth and diversification for more than 35 years since the company’s beginning.

Serving the needs of a growing customer base has required substantial investment in its operating capabilities to include asphalt paving and production, with plants located in New Jersey and Delaware. This investment has allowed the contractor to serve a large geographic region including New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Southeastern Pennsylvania.

With its main asphalt production facility located in Bridgeport, NJ, Pierson upgraded that plant over the years and investigated ways to expand production at other locations.
“We bought two new Astec/ Dillman plants in 2016, one for our Cinnaminson, NJ location, and one for our Hillsborough, NJ site,” says Slavic Mokienko, general manager for Pierson Materials. 

The Cinnaminson Plant

The Cinnaminson 500 TPH Unified Drum facility, which includes both Astec and Dillman components, was brought online in June of 2016 at a site once occupied by an old 1-1/2-ton batch plant. It took several months to make adjustments in order to reach full production capabilities.

“Asphalt plant sites are hard to acquire due to strict local and state regulations,” Mokienko notes. “We bought the site in order to acquire
the permit.”

The other new plant, located in Hillsborough, will be in full operation by this fall.

The Dillman 9 ft. 6 in. by 54 ft. counterflow drum, featuring 3/8-in. constructed V-type veiling flights, is fired by a Phoenix 100 MBTU burner that can run on natural gas, #2 fuel oil or waste oil. Pierson also purchased the Astec warm mix system, which allows both hot and warm mix designs to be water-foamed to achieve better asphalt cement coating during the mixing process.

A 2 MBTU gas or oil-fired hot oil Heatec heater maintains a ready supply of liquid asphalt binder in two 30,000-gallon insulated vertical storage tanks. A drag conveyor carries processed mix to one of three 300-ton storage silos that comprise the New Generation Storage System. The relocatable plant is supplied by six cold feed bins and three RAP bins. An 80,000 CFM Mod Reverse Pulse Baghouse with a Variable Frequency Drive exhaust fan system for energy efficiency, and an 11 ft. 6 in. by 26 ft. 9-1/2 in. pilot control center completes the main component investment at the site.

The reason Pierson chose a relocatable plant versus a stationary plant is because the set-up time is faster.

“We wanted to get this plant up and running as soon as we could because we knew it would be more efficient to run and allow us to produce and store a variety of mix designs needed to serve our projects, as well as those of other contractors we sell to,” Mokienko states. “With the 500 TPH production capability, we can easily reduce our output to 200 TPH and still operate efficiently. We have 50 dump trucks in our fleet and will rent the services of 150 truck drivers a day to supply projects, so having a plant that can quickly increase production has been a significant improvement to our production capabilities. We also support two to four of our own paving crews during peak season, and that’s always a primary need you have to be able to fill to keep projects on schedule with quality mix that meets specifications.”
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