Shilling Construction’s Proven Screed
Shilling Construction has been testing out an innovative textured screed from AXENOX Construction Solutions since April 2020. During that time, the system has moved from social media curiosity to the crew’s favorite screed.
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BY ASPHALTPRO STAFF
When Travis Shilling, vice president of Shilling Construction Company Inc., Manhattan, Kansas, first saw a video on social media of a textured screed in January 2020, he was intrigued. Shilling reached out to Stuart and Michael Frost, who invented the unique screed, and asked if he could buy one. The brothers agreed to send Shilling their new screed to help them test the design. When Shilling received his screed in April 2020, it was the first model in operation outside the Frosts’ own paving company, Mountain Construction Company, Powell, Wyoming. To date, only a handful of paving contractors have had the chance to use the Frosts’ screed system firsthand. The Frost brothers are third-generation paving contractors; their grandfather started paving back in the 1940s. Throughout their time in the industry, the brothers have performed a lot of their own
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equipment maintenance, learning how to fabricate, weld, engineer and eventually invent new machinery. “That’s how we learned so much about paving—through the school of hard knocks,” Stuart Frost said. Although the brothers have had numerous inventions, this is the first time they’ve moved to commercialize one. “We felt this was too important of a technology not to share it with the industry,” Stuart Frost said, citing its potential to increase paving efficiency, reduce compactive effort, and even open up new opportunities in mat thicknesses and nominal maximum aggregate size. They started AXENOX Construction Solutions and began posting eye-catching videos of their products—the OXCLAW textured screed and BULLOX conductor plate—in action on social media. Those videos included the one Shilling spotted.
