JCB has developed a single-machine pothole and patching repair solution to fix potholes permanently, the Pothole Pro. This solution helps minimize labor intensive repair methods or additional machinery.
The Pothole Pro can repair a pothole in less than eight minutes. The machine’s development has been personally led by JCB Chairman Lord Bamford.
“Potholes are really a scourge; we are fixated on this dreadful problem and I am fixated on finding a solution. We simply cannot allow our road networks to continue to be blighted by potholes,” said Lord Bamford, JCB chairman. “JCB’s solution is simple and cost effective and fixes potholes permanently, first time. Once the machine has done its job all the contractor then needs to do is just add asphalt.”
With a 25-mph travel speed, the machine can relocate between sites without additional transport costs.
The JCB Pothole Pro is equipped with a planer, mounted on the machine’s rear skid steer hitch. The planer is 24 in. wide, with up to 4.26 ft. of side-shift adjustment. This allows the operator to plane a full roadway lane from the curb, without repositioning the machine. Hydraulic tilt and depth control provide a consistent depth for large patches.
The machine’s TAB two-piece boom features the JCB ‘Multi-tool’, mounted on an X12 Steelwrist tilt-rotator. The ‘Multi-tool’ is comprised of two attachments, a dedicated hydraulic cropper and a sweeper/bucket, with integrated dust suppression. The 16-in. cropping tool eliminates the need for floor saws or hydraulic breakers, providing a squared off, clean cut to the repair area. The operator then rotates the boom head to bring a 4-ft. wide sweeper/bucket into use, to clean up the pothole area, eliminating the requirement for a separate sweeper truck. Material lifted by the sweeper/bucket can be loaded directly into a support truck for removal from site.
The Pothole Pro can prepare up to 299 y2 of roadway in a single shift, or 6,540 y3 per month and allows the contractor or municipality to cut the defect, crop the edges and clean the hole with one machine. Safety is also improved as the crew does not have to complete the handheld cutting and breaking, eliminating the risk of hand arm vibration syndrome (HAVS).
The machine was tested on roads in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire in the UK for months and the city council worked with JCB for 12 months as innovation partners to develop the Pothole Pro. In initial testing, the machine completed 51 road repair jobs in 20 days, which would have taken a crew of six workers 63 days to complete normally.
The council became the first to invest in one of the machines last year and earlier this year celebrated a milestone in its mission to fix potholes – after completing almost three years of repairs in just over four months with JCB’s Pothole Pro machine.
The local authority has repaired a staggering 13,080 y2 of road with the JCB Pothole Pro in just 130 days – an area equivalent to eight Olympic sized swimming pools. Using traditional methods, this task would have taken a staggering 1,040 days or almost three years. The Pothole Pro has also been tested and evaluated in North America, most recently at multiple municipalities in Pennsylvania.
“Amazed, I was very impressed with how quickly it worked, the speed of the mill head is definitely faster than anything I’ve utilized out on a jobsite, and the maneuverability was fantastic” said Neil Stoltzfus, roadmaster of West Earl Township in Pennsylvania. “This would typically have been a three-machine operation and instead the Pothole Pro was able to accomplish the task with one machine, without changing any attachments.”
