For at least two decades, Renda Roads Inc. has been a name associated with quality road paving work in New Jersey. And to help maintain the good reputation they’ve garnered over the years, employees of the family-owned company use compact equipment.
When owner Ernesto Renda founded the company, he did so with just a paving machine and a compactor. But as times changed and the company grew, Renda Roads in Whitehouse, N.J., found new ways to complete paving jobs more efficiently. One of those changes was the addition of skid-steer loaders and attachments to its equipment fleet in the early 1990s.
Today, the 25-employee company uses Bobcat S300 and S185 skid-steer loaders along with several attachments to complete street and parking lot paving jobs, said Peter DeLoria, vice president of Renda Roads.
During a recent street paving project, a Renda Roads prep crew arrived with the S300 skid-steer loader and a Bobcat 24-in. high-flow planer attachment. The prep crew used the planer attachment for milling potholes, alligator cracks and other surface defects. Since purchasing the planer attachment, DeLoria said it has saved a great deal of time because crews no longer have to jackhammer and saw cut asphalt in order to complete repair work.
By matching the S300 skid-steer loader’s high-flow hydraulic system with a high-flow planer attachment, the crew is able to do even more. The high-flow system provides an additional 7 gpm (or total 37 gpm) of auxiliary hydraulics to the planer attachment, giving the crew faster and greater production. Besides mating uneven pavement surfaces, the planer can be used to cut drainage in parking lots and clean up around larger milling machines.
The prep crew also can do more with the S300’s selectable joystick controls’ speed-management feature. With speed management, operators can simply “dial in” their required travel speed in small increments from 0 to 7 mph, while maintaining driveline torque and full hydraulic power. Rather than having to continuously hold the joystick in the same exact position to maintain a constant travel speed, operators can now maintain maximum driveline torque and full hydraulic power at slower speeds, simply by dialing it in. This feature is especially beneficial when using the Bobcat planer attachment, and it also increases productivity where fine loader and attachment movements are required, such as loading a paver, filling a bucket, working in tight areas or hooking up attachments.
After the prep crew completed their milling work at the jobsite, they used a Bobcat sweeper attachment to the S300 to sweep, collect and dump dirt and other debris. DeLoria said the sweeper attachment also saves crews time because they no longer have to sweep jobsites by hand.
The Bobcat S185 skid-steer loader goes out with the company’s paving crew. DeLoria said it’s used to transport asphalt and other materials within tight areas where their large paving machine can’t go. Without the compact size and agility of the S185, Renda Roads crews would have to transport the asphalt from the mixer to the paving machine by wheelbarrow.
