Watching Dump Trucks Build Roads

I bet you didn’t know that dump trucks built roads. In a way, they do. Sure, they don’t smooth out the road base and they don’t lay the seal, but they do play a big role in building our roads. In fact, if you care to stop and watch a team as they build a new road, you will be amazed at how involved a dump truck is.

Without getting too technical in how a new road is built, there are steps which are pretty obvious. The stretch of land where a new road is to be built has to be cleared of vegetation. A road crew will often remove the top foot or so of soil – sometimes much more. This is generally the role of a bulldozer and a front end loader. The loader of course dumps the cleared waste into – a dump truck.

From there, graders get to work leveling the new road. Once they have a smooth platform to build a road on, the assembly of a new road begins. And that is what it is – an assembly project. Dump trucks bring in road base, a material used to make the foundations of the road. This could be a gravel and cement mixture, for example. The dump trucks don’t just dump and run. If you watch them you will see they start the tipper action and as the base starts to flow out, they drive slowly down the new road evenly spreading the road base. This makes life easier for the grader who follows and smooths out the material.

There are several other processes such as driving rollers over this area, which compact and level out the road base. It is then ready for the final seal. This could be cement or a hot mix. Either way, a special machine is used to lay the seal. Once again, dump trucks are used to carry the mix – they dump it in to the machine laying the new road. Wave after wave of trucks come in and they are able to empty their contents without the machine stopping. This enable a completely smooth road to be laid without any seams.

Dump trucks are involved in some way in every step of road making. You can work as a dump truck driver once you complete a truck driver training program. The pay is good, the hours are great, and the job never boring. At the end of the day, you can look back on a piece of road that you have helped build – a permanent record of your hard work.