Work on Highway 36 outside Milwaukee runs smoothly

By: John Logan

The combined advantages of versatility and mobility in its equipment fleet help Zignego Co. Inc. achieve a profitable level of productivity on its numerous urban, highway and interstate construction jobs. Recently, that included a major four-lane highway repair project on Highway 36 (Loomis Road) outside Milwaukee, Wis.

“The work was in an urban location with a lot of intersections and stop lights,” said Terry Zignego, the company’s equipment supervisor. “We did a lot of different kinds of work, so it is to our advantage to work quickly and efficiently — to do as much as we can with a few very versatile machines.”

The company used a Gradall XL 4100 III to remove large sections of concrete after they had been saw-cut. High-pressure, load-sensing hydraulics provide excellent boom strength for the Series III model, allowing it to easily lift large sections weighing up to 10,000 lb.

The full-tilting boom design also allowed the operator to properly position the pavement-removal bucket to break up oversized concrete slabs with precision, and then pick up the sections from various angles to load them into a truck. Once the old pavement sections were removed and the base areas were properly graded, the crew drilled into remaining concrete sections and installed rebar to make sure the newly poured asphalt section would remain as stable as possible.

As part of the overall highway upgrading effort, the Zignego crew also created several new turn lanes on the same section of highway, in addition to removing and replacing old curbs and gutters. Workers used the excavator to excavate and remove the old curbs and various other sections of concrete, and then re-grade those areas, including spreading dirt and finishing the surface before the new asphalt was poured.