What do you do with 10,000 tons of recycled asphalt shingles? If you’re Cat® customers Southwind RAS and Plote Construction, you build a new runway at Chicago O’Hare’s south airfield. Both companies relied on Cat equipment for the job—Southwind RAS for recycling and Plote Construction for paving.
Dealer Patten Cat provided Plote Construction with Cat pavers, rollers and a skid steer loader, strengthening an already solid relationship.
“We’ve made all our new purchases through them,” Dan Plote said. “They’ve done a great job over the years servicing the account, whether it’s parts and service or selling us new stuff when we’re in a pinch. It’s not really about one specific experience; it’s about the long-term, multi-generational relationship.”
Patten Cat Paving Specialist Jamie Wilson said Plote Construction has particularly benefited from the AP1055E paver, which lays a superior mat of asphalt with the help of GPS.
“It’s one of the heaviest, most reliable machines in the industry today,” he said. “Most runways are built in 25-foot increments. The GPS makes sure that those 25-foot strips are exactly straight and that they’re to grade.”
Southwind RAS also used Cat equipment for the project. “We are using Cat loaders at all of our shingle recycling locations to perform both production and load-out tasks on an everyday basis,” said Engineering Manager M. Slade O’Keefe. “The performance has been outstanding and the maintenance tracking tools have been a plus.”
This isn’t the first time Patten Cat has provided equipment for a project at the airport. The dealer has also trained members of the airport authority on compaction and paving. “We just try to make sure they stay up on the latest technology that’s available for these projects,” Wilson said.
