Pavement maintenance
American Pavement Paves the Way for Amazon During World War II, the building at 75 Aircraft Road, Southington, Connecticut, was home to the aerospace manufacturer Pratt and Whitney. After its construction in 1942, the facility spent the war manufacturing and repairing Double Wasp engines and producing components used in the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter and Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber. According to Preservation Connecticut, a nonprofit organization established by the Connecticut State Legislature to preserve the state’s historic buildings, operations at the facility peaked for the company in 1968 and steadily declined until Pratt and Whitney’s parent company, United Technologies Corporation, announced the plant would close in 1995. For more than 20 years, the building and its 300,000-square-foot parking lot sat empty, until it was leased as a fulfillment center in 2017. Now, Amazon uses the facility to park more than 700 vans each night. It is one of a handful of facilities the company has invested in throughout Connecticut over the past few years. According to the Hartford Business Journal, realty experts say Connecticut is an “ideal choice for fulfillment- and distribution-related enterprises” due to the many major interstates running through the state and the availability of large land parcels. For this particular distribution center, Amazon didn’t have to start from the ground up, utilizing the old Pratt and Whitney factory. However, the parking lot was a different story. According to Josh Stanley of American Pavement Specialists, Danbury, Connecticut, the lot was between 30 and 40 years old and full of potholes and spider cracks. There were issues with standing water and it seemed as though multiple patch and shim jobs had been laid throughout the lot to maintain it over the years. When American Pavement was hired to repair the parking lot, the company decided
D
10 // july 2021
The crew placed 1.5 inches of Class I asphalt, followed by a 1.5-inch top course of Class II asphalt. In total, the job required 6,000 tons of asphalt. The job was awarded very late in the 2020 season, with American Pavement beginning their work early November. full depth reclamation (FDR) was the best course of action so Amazon would have a new pavement from the subgrade up.
FROM INSTAGRAM TO AMAZON
The prime contractor, Lascon Inc., Eastchester, New York, asked for quotes from three paving companies: two large paving corporations and American Pavement, “the lean, mean paving specialists,” Stanley said. Although American Pavement had bid on other Amazon projects, this was the first one they were awarded. Ultimately, Stanley said, they were awarded the job after Lascon spent some time on their Instagram page. “They said once they saw the pride we took in our work and the way we operate, they felt we were the right company for the job,” Stanley said. The job was awarded very late in the 2020 season, with American Pavement beginning their work early November. The Tilcon asphalt plant located five miles from the
project would be closed over the winter, so the job needed to be completed before the plant’s season shut-down Dec. 14. Once the reclaimer was in the ground and there was enough room for the grader, the crew began grading. As soon as the grader finished a section large enough and compacted enough for paving to begin, the paving crew set to work. “Our projects are one continuous ballet of equipment and manpower,” Stanley said. The job called for FDR, using the underlying materials for a stabilized base course. They reclaimed the existing asphalt and gravel subgrade to a depth between 8 and 12 inches. The crew performed this with its Wirtgen WR 200i reclaimer. Due to the large size of the lot, American Pavement hired out a CMI reclaimer from Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming Inc., Bloomfield, Connecticut. “Hiring a second reclaimer to help with the cutting was one of the best decisions we made,” Stanley said. “That one decision probably cut two days off the entire project.”
