Wide Open Spaces
Border States Paving (BSP) is a family-owned general contractor that operates 2 permanent asphalt plants, as well as a one portable plant, which produce asphalt for the paving projects that they complete throughout the Dakotas, Wyoming and eastern Montana. In addition to the traditional paving tools that they use daily, BSP crews have adopted technology, one of which is FleetWatcher telematics, to eliminate over trucking, streamline their operations, and eliminate the waste of traditional paper tickets with e-ticketing.
Early in 2022 they integrated their FleetWatcher e-ticketing with OnStation to determine exact locations more precisely for each load of asphalt placed. On a paving project along US Highway 12 in South Dakota this technology integration not only increased their accuracy, but it also made their jobsites a lot safer.
The Project
BSP crews were tasked with paving US highway 12 eastward from Thunderhawk, South Dakota. Material was produced at a portable plant located near Shadehill, South Dakota, approximately 20 miles away.
The plant was running 450 tons of Q3R an hour, from sunup to sundown. There were 20 company-owned trucks on the project, all equipped with FleetWatcher telematics hardwired into them, and an additional four third-party trucks equipped with FleetWatcher through portable devices. A total of 32,000 ton of asphalt was laid for the 13-mile project on both eastbound and westbound lanes of the 2-lane highway.
In addition to keeping the trucks staged, thus eliminating idle time at the plant or paver, the telematics helped in other numerous ways. Most notably, the use of telematics deeply improved communications, according to BSP technology coordinator Lukas Slotten.
“If there were issues on the road or at the plant, these guys are figuring out the problems and starting to fix them,” said Slotten.
That eliminated over trucking, allowed BSP to get more production from fewer trucks, and, also, improved the consistency of the asphalt being produced.
“The plant manager can see that they are coming up on a bridge, so he can start slowing down the plant ensuring that our hot spots aren’t as severe. We can keep the drum turning and make our materials more consistent,” Slotten said.
In addition to keeping the gradations more consistent on the materials, this eliminates any unnecessary wear and tear on the plant.
Manual Processes Present Opportunities
Previously on BSP projects, a single person collected the tickets, which contain the latitude and longitude of the dump location, and then estimated how far they were from the Station. “You’ve got your stations every 100 feet,” explains Slotten, “and the ticket taker would estimate Station plus 50 feet. It was just a guess.” Slotten figured there had to be a better way.
“We started talking back and forth between BSP, FleetWatcher and OnStation, and the South Dakota DOT to see if we could use everyone's technology and convert it into one,” recalls Slotten.
“We'd still have our checker on the side of the road writing down station numbers just to see how accurate they actually were.”
As it turned out they were not very accurate.
“Before, we were getting estimates - now we’re accurate to within a couple feet,” says Slotten.
This new functionality automatically tracks the load from the time it is fully loaded at the asphalt plant, all the way through its dump into the paver on the jobsite. The exact Station location becomes a part of the digital e-ticket, with no operator intervention required. Operators and transportation agency officials can know precisely on a jobsite where a specific load of asphalt was laid, so that if a future problem arises, they can investigate other parameters around that location, including core tests, density, drainage, or others, to determine the scope of the problem.
How it Works
When a FleetWatcher equipped truck enters a jobsite geozone, the vehicles latitude/longitude is sent to OnStation. After verifying that it is part of the project, OnStation return the station, alignment, and offset where the load is deposited, which then becomes part of the e-ticket. The e-ticket then flows normally through to the DOT and BSP crew personnel. The process occurs automatically and replaces manual tracking and estimating by the BSP ticket taker, which they discovered was often erroneous.
Additionally, this stationing information for each load is maintained in Fleetwatcher indefinitely for future use. Though there haven’t been issues requiring the locating of a specific load of asphalt placed on the Highway 12 project, Slotten knows that if one arises in the future, it can be easily found.
Due to the fact BSP removed the person alongside the paver, walking up to trucks, collecting paper tickets, and then estimating locations, they are safely out of harm’s way.
“Now we’ve got a person off the road in a pickup. It’s just one less person out there to worry about when you’ve got big iron going down the road,” said Slotten. “We were testing out the technology to see how well it works and how accurate it is. We found out that it’s way more accurate than what we were doing. And we’re hoping to eliminate a person collecting the material because its already in FleetWtacher.”
It is much more efficient for the project engineer to determine yields, as a result, thanks to the seamless integration of FleetWatcher and OnStation. Now, all of the needed information is already placed on the e-ticket, accessible by smart-phone. There is no more collecting manual tickets then looking through them to figure yields, so the process is simpler.
Another area where BSP is using technology to enhance their performance is with Intelligent Compaction or IC. A thermal camera on the back of the paver captures the temperature of the load and feeds this data to the inline rollers which are all equipped with IC, allowing them to achieve more uniform compaction. This was especially important on the US Highway 12 project, which was completed on October 22, as the South Dakota temperatures were in decline for the winter season.
BSP certainly had all the traditional paving tools on hand to get the job done. But their use of technology allowed them to do the job more accurately, efficiently, safely, and more consistently than ever before. It removed another person from the process by eliminating the ticket-taker function, and further enhanced the efficiency and cost effectiveness of the technology.
