Features Heavy Equipment Pits & Quarries
Concrete professionals take over Las Vegas

Tens of thousands of people from concrete-related industries swarmed the Las Vegas Convention Center to check out the latest technologies to help optimize their operations.

Industry professionals at the show included commercial contractors; concrete contractors; concrete pumpers; construction managers; dealers/distributors; decorative concrete contractors; designers and specifiers; general contractors; masonry contractors; architects; engineers; rental equipment centres; residential contractors; precast, pipe and block producers; and many others.

The show featured more than 1,500 exhibitors covering 700,000 sq. ft. of outdoor and indoor exhibit space.

Quality control

At the Trimble booth, contractors had the opportunity to check out the company’s latest fleet management offerings, including TrimView Direct, which allows contractors to keep an eye on a variety of aspects of their ready-mix fleet operations, including drum rotations and how much water is being added.

“You can keep a close eye on the quality of mix in addition to delivery of the mix,” said Trimble’s Kevin Garcia as he offered Rock to Road a tour of the system. 

Changing trends in PPE

Colour preferences are changing in the personal protective equipment sector of the construction industry.

DeWalt PPE specialist Chris Carpenter discussed how there has been a growing trend over the past seven or eight years towards the bright yellow/lime green colours for safety vests. He added that black sections at the bottom of the vests – for people to wipe their hands off on – are becoming more popular as well. Carpenter says the black sections give the vests a cleaner look and save operations money.

“Folks tend to not throw it away if it looks cleaner,” he said.

Carpenter also mentioned that combination yellow-orange safety jackets are becoming quite popular on jobsites, since “anything we can do to differentiate ourselves from stationary objects on a job site” is a good thing.

A concrete presentation

The Wirtgen Group set up a full concrete paving train from paving to placement to curing at their booth.

The company set up two brand new machines in the paving train: the WPS 62i placer/spreader and the SP 124i slipform paver, as well as the TCM 180i texture curing machine. Touchscreens highlighting the features of the various machines within the paving train were also on display.

During a walkaround of the paving train, director of marketing Matt Graves explained that setting up the paving train in its actual workflow was a huge benefit to attendees to show them how this paving solution can work for their future projects.

Compact features

A wide variety of compact equipment was also on display at WOC 2020.

At the Doosan Infracore booth, Aaron Kleingartner offered Rock to Road a tour of the company’s new DX62R mini-excavator. The unit features a reduced tail swing (4”) for tight working spaces.

Greg Worley over at the Caterpillar booth discussed the new CAT 306 6-ton mini excavator – the first true 6-ton mini-excavator designed from the ground up and produced by Caterpillar. Some of its features included: cruise control; customizable operator settings; three blade options; and two separate windows on the operator door to reduce maintenance costs (the bottom glass is more likely to break than the top, so it reduces the amount of glass needed for a replacement during some breaks).

Doug Laufenberg showed off the latest improvements to the John Deere 317G compact track loader, including windows that are removable from the inside to clean both sides of the glass; a rear-view camera and hydraulic lines now tucked inside for improved durability.

Stay tuned for more about the 2020 edition of the World of Concrete in the upcoming issue of Rock to Road.