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August 18 2010
Vol. XLVIII • No. 17
“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded 1957.”
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Inside
Full Impact of Gulf Oil Spill Still Uncertain
A Francis J. Palo crew sets a beam on the northbound lane, using their Manitowoc 100-ton (90.7 t) crane.
By Giles Lambertson
Groff Purchases Cambria Tractor…8
Mass. Firm Shares Recipe for Success…40
CEG CORRESPONDENT
New Bridge in Punxsutawney, Pa., Ensures Smoother Travels By Jennifer Rupp
CEG CORRESPONDENT
N.Y. Scrap Yard Crushes the Competition…67
Table of Contents ........4 Truck & Trailer Section .. ..............................59-63 Crushing, Screening & Recycling Section 67-90 Parts Section ....104-105 Business Calendar....118 Auction Section112-128 Advertisers Index ....126
If Punxsutawney Phil can’t see his shadow next year, he can always go stand in the shade of the new Mahoning Creek Bridge. The Punxsutawney Borough in Pennsylvania will soon be accessible via a smoother and safer bridge over the Mahoning Creek. The current 200-ft. (61 m) bridge which carries U.S. 119 over the creek is being replaced with a 220-ft. (67 m)
three-lane, two-span composite steel multi-girder bridge. The $5.3 million project is located between SR 3017 (Indiana Street) and Church Street in Punxsutawney Borough, Jefferson County. The PennDOT (Pennsylvania Department of Transportation) project includes bridge replacement, approach work and additional paving extending to downtown Punxsutawney. Work began in March 2010 and is anticipated to be
The blowout of the Deepwater Horizon oil well in April has been a slow-motion disaster for Gulf states, with the agony measured in economic uncertainty as well as in real-and-present environmental injury. Construction contractors are among the residents of states bordering the Gulf of Mexico who are still assimilating what it all means. There is not yet general agreement whether the spill, now capped, will end up hurting the industry a little, a lot, or not at all. In truth, the immediate impact on builders is mostly positive. That’s because manmade and natural disasters always spur clean-up activity, which nearly always means building industry job creation in the short term. After Hurricane Katrina smashed Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, debris removal and then reconstruction of vast stretches of those states were a tremendous boon to contractors. One of the differences between that catastrophe and this one is that most of the oil spillage is affecting Gulf waters and coastal areas. While some sand berm-building and coastal dredging work suddenly has been needed, the bulk of the manpower
see BRIDGE page 32
see SPILL page 14
Stimulus Transportation Investments a Bright Spot The highway investments in the stimulus law have been a bright spot for a transportation construction industry hard hit by recessioninduced cutbacks in state programs and decline in private sector work. But continued uncertainty about passage of a multi-year surface transportation reauthorization bill
is hindering chances for a sustained economic recovery. That was the thrust of the message delivered by Kevin Gannon, vice president of Appleton, Wis.based Northeast Asphalt Inc., at a July 27 House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee hearing on implementation of the
American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Gannon, a director on the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) board, told the committee that recovery act-funded projects his company is working on have not wholly offset the 50 percent drop in
private sector work in recent years. He said, however, that ARRA projects have allowed them to hang on to the firm’s existing workforce. Gannon noted that as of July 16, more than 11,000 highway and bridge projects under the recovery act had moved to the construction see ARTBA page 104