About Asphalt Equipment
Asphalt equipment manufactures, delivers, finishes, and recycles the blacktop material from which roads, runways, and parking lots are made. Today’s models use high-tech grading systems and emissions controls to reduce construction time, cost, and environmental impact. There are several subcategories; here’s a brief overview of each.
Asphalt pavers lay down, spread, and compact asphalt using a tractor and a floating screed. Self-propelled, diesel-powered pavers come in wheeled or tracked configurations.
Asphalt plants mix heated liquid asphalt cement (AC) with aggregate, recycled asphalt pavement (RAP), and other materials to create hot mix asphalt (HMA) or energy-saving warm mix asphalt (WMA). There are continuous drum mix and batch mix variations of stationary and relocatable plants, as well as trailer-mounted portable batch plants.
Road wideners perform a combination of tasks to quickly create additional lanes on existing roads and add or widen shoulders. A hydraulically driven belt places controlled amounts of aggregate material, dirt, or asphalt, whereupon a strike-off tool levels the material to the necessary grade and slope.
Cold planers, also known as asphalt milling machines, can grind down bumps and road surface defects, as well as remove damaged sections for repair. They range from large, self-propelled tracked or wheeled machines down to compact skid-steer attachments.
A material transfer vehicle (MTV) takes hot mix asphalt from dump trucks, keeps it heated, and delivers it to the hopper of a paver as needed. The two most common types are windrow elevator MTVs and remixing models, the latter of which uses augers to keep the HMA from separating.
Soil stabilizers alter the physical makeup of soil through the use of chemical additives to create a more stable base and subgrade. Many self-propelled units can also act as recyclers, using milling and cutting rotors to pulverize and granulate the top layers of an existing surface for immediate reuse in repaving.
Force feed loaders use a front pickup/feeder assembly to pick up windrowed or piled asphalt millings (as well as soil, snow, compost, or debris). They move the material upward via conveyor toward the machine’s rear where a discharge conveyor directs it into a waiting dump truck.
Asphalt distributors lay a seal coat on top of a paved surface to reinforce it and extend its life. The major types of asphalt sprayers are truck-mounted, towable (or trailer), and self-propelled.
Crack sealers, also called “asphalt kettles,” “melting kettles,” or simply “melters,” fill cracks in asphalt with a sealant to prevent dirt, rocks, sand, and water from entering them. Available in towable and walk-behind configurations, crack sealers use various methods to apply sealant, but the two most common are the gravity and hose methods.
Find The Right Asphalt Equipment
You’ll find an amazing variety of new and used asphalt equipment for sale at PavingEquipment.com, including asphalt pavers, asphalt plants, road wideners, cold planers, material transfer vehicles, road wideners, cold planers, material transfer vehicles, soil stabilizers / recyclers, force feed loaders, asphalt distributors, crack sealers, and more.