CAT Road Grader

The smell of the fresh plowed earth was abounding when I made this photo. This is a photo of road grading, which consists of using a motor grader to restore the driving surface and drainage attributes to roads. The operator will remove washboards, potholes and other irregularities by cutting the surface of the road or filling them with material moved back and forth across the road with the road grader. Surface maintenance is cyclical by definition. No matter how well maintenance is done, it will need to be re-done. The abrasive action of traffic wears away at the fines which bind the road together. Over time, the coarse stones, which provide the road’s strength, are displaced by traffic and accumulate along the edge of the road. This windrow of particles traps water on the traveled surface. Water that cannot flow off the road has more time to penetrate and saturate the road material, softening and lubricating it. Additionally, water accumulates on the road surface and flows toward the lowest point, typically following the wheel tracks. Water concentrated in the wheel track gains velocity, eroding the driving surface. The process starts slowly but if surface maintenance is not completed on a timely basis, the damage to the road can be severe.
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