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“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded 1957.” 4
October 27, 2012 • Vol. IXX • No. 22 • 470 Maryland Drive • Ft. Washington, PA 19034 • 215-885-2900 • Toll Free 800-523-2200 • Fax 215-885-2910 • www.constructionequipmentguide.com
Inside
Bridge Workers Float, Hoist Steel Arch to New Bridge in Minn.
Roland Throws Annual Fish Fry Event...10
By Dick Rohland CEG CORRESPONDENT
Paul Bunyan Show Attr act s Thousands...14
Mammoet, a Netherlands based company, supplied the hoist and rail system to slide the arch into place and hoist it to the top of its piers. While the actual move of the arch to the bridge took less than two hours, aligning it between the piers involved dozens of workers and many more hours. Nort rax Hol ds Open House ... 20
With a glass-like river surface, patience and precision maneuvering, bridge workers floated and hoisted a 545 ft. (166 m) long free standing tied arch to its place on the new Hastings, Minn., bridge. Shooting to open the bridge to two lanes of traffic by early summer, 2013, it will have the longest, free standing tied arch span in North America, according to Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) officials. The new bridge will replace a 60-year-old arch steel truss structure that is outdated, under capacity and one of the busiest two lane bridges in the state. The bridge carries TH 61 across the river. The highway is a north/south road that terminates at the Canadian border on the north shore of Lake Superior and runs south near the eastern edge of Minnesota to St. Paul. In St. Paul, it meets with the Mississippi River and follows the river’s western shore line to the southeastern corner of the state and its border with Iowa. The joint venture of Lunda/Ames broke ground in the fall of 2010 for this project and is building the new, 1,900 ft. (580 m) bridge next to the existing one at an estimated cost of $120 million. Lunda and Ames are both heavy construction contractors specializing in bridge and road construction in the Midwest. MnDOT is keeping the existing bridge open to traffic while its replacement is under construction. see ARCH page 60
Table of Contents ................4
Deere-Hitachi Corp. Plans 340 Job Openings
Paving Section ............31-43
By Emery P. Dalesio
Crawler Loaders, Dozers Section..........................49-57
KERNERSVILLE, N.C. (AP) A partnership between two behemoth builders of excavating
Snow & Ice Section ....69-75
August, September See Employment Increase
Parts Section ....................78 Auction Section ..........80-89 Business Calendar ............86 Advertisers Index ..............90
AP BUSINESS WRITER
Construction employers added 5,000 jobs in September while the industry’s unemployment rate hit 11.9 percent, according to an analysis of new federal data released Oct. 5 by the Associated General Contractors of America.
machinery said Oct. 5 it plans to add 340 jobs at a Forsyth County plant in return for incentives of more than $5 million. Deere-Hitachi Construction Machinery Corp. said it will expand its Kernersville plant
Association officials cautioned that construction employment has been relatively flat for more than a year as growing demand for residential and some commercial projects has been offset by declining public sector construction
that now employs more than 700. The plant is a part of a 24-year partnership between Tokyobased Hitachi Construction Machinery and Moline, Ill.-based Deere & Co. to manufacture see JOBS page 84
activity. “Despite the slight uptick in construction employment for the past month, the industry is a bit smaller than it was one year ago,” said see EMPLOYMENT page 78