PAVING MACHINE USED ON JACKSON STREET PROJECT IS ONE OF THREE IN COUNTRY

JACKSON - The paving machine working on the West Main Street improvement project in Jackson is probably as unique as the man who designed and still operates it.

Harry Dale, 85, is a semi-retired contractor who worked more than 50 years in the construction-paving business. For 25 of those years Dale owned and operated a construction company that included street-paving projects.

He now works as a paving consultant to SIS Concretors of Creal Springs, Ill., the contractor on the West Main Street project.

Dale says he designed his paving machine to work on steep slopes and grades. "As far as I know, there are only two like it in the world. One is here in Jackson, and the other is in Louisiana, where it is used by a contractor to pour concrete slabs on the steep slope of Mississippi River levees," he explained.

The machine is called a "Slip Form" paver because it does not need the usual wood or metal forms to hold the poured concrete. "The paver carries the form with it," said Dale. "When it's up and running, it can pave two to eight linear feet of concrete per minute, depending on whether it works on a flat surface or slope."

The street project in Jackson calls for a 19-foot-wide slab for the south lane, but the paver can pave a slab up to 24-feet wide.

Dale said the paver is much faster and more efficient than other traditional paving machines. "Setting up the forms and the preparation of the sub-grade is the most time consuming part of paving," he said. "Once you get going, the actual paving does not take much time.

"If you don't have to spend a lot of time setting up the forms before you pour the concrete, you save money on the forms, plus the expense of setting up and taking down the forms."

Dale said with his custom-designed paver, he was able to reduce his paving crew from 15-20 people down to only five.

Dale said another feature of the paver is that it can pave a continuous slab of pavement as long as the concrete trucks keeps coming and the finishers can work.

Paving the south lane of pavement on West Main began shortly after noon Tuesday. The contractor planned to pour the entire 1,200-feet of pavement - from Hubble Creek to South High Street - in about six to seven hours. If the project were done the traditional way, with forms for each section of pavement, it would take several days to complete the pour.

The paver is powered by a diesel engine that operates two crawler tracks at each side. The concrete is poured from the mixer truck into the sub-grade dirt and gravel ahead of the paver. A worm-drive conveyor forces the concrete into and under the paver, which acts as its own form. In its path, the paver leaves a smooth surface slab of wet concrete ready to be finished by the crew of cement finishers.

Dale said he has designed other paving machines that can do flat paving work, but this particular machine, and the other one in Louisiana, are the only ones he knows of that can pour concrete pavement on a 3-1 slope angle. "And that's not an easy task," he said. "On this job we're only using about half of its total capacity."

The 92-degree heat and high humidity didn't seem to bother Dale as he stood at the controls of the machine, stopping occasionally to jump off the paver to check the alignment with the curb. He says the physical activity involved in his 50-year career in paving has helped him maintain his good physical condition and stamina, even at age 85.