Valley Paving received its OXCLAW screed early June 2020 and has since used the screed on more than 30 projects.
PATTERNED SCREED PLATE OFFERS SMOOTH MAT
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BY ASPHALTPRO STAFF
Brent Carron is the first to admit that if you want a smooth road, it makes sense to start with a smooth screed plate. After one season paving with a patterned screed plate from AXENOX Construction Solutions, Powell, Wyoming, he’s ready to reconsider that conventional wisdom. Carron, vice president at Valley Paving Inc., Shakopee, Minnesota, first learned about the unique screed in February 2020. He and his father, Rich Carron, were attending a product demonstration when they struck up a conversation with the screed’s inventors, brothers Stuart and Michael Frost. “Not 90 seconds into the conversation, Stuart took out his phone and showed us this patterned screed plate and asked if we’d like to try it,” Carron said. “It was the craziest thing I ever saw.” Crazy as it seemed, Valley Paving’s history of innovation encouraged them to give it a try. The company itself was born in 1979 when, as Car-
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ron puts it, his father thought he could make a better widget. “My father’s always been an early adopter,” Carron said. “He swears to me he was the first in Minnesota to adopt belly-dump paving with windrow elevators after seeing it out in California.”
Valley Paving Inc., specializes in heavy highway work, but also performs municipal work, parking lots and the occasional driveway. In 2020, the company paved 500,000 tons of asphalt with its two crews. He and his father knew the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) was open to innovation, having been a leader in intelligent compaction and thermal profiling. They also knew their crews enjoyed a new challenge. And, they could tell the Frosts grew up in the industry.
