County road contract rock letting, March 25

     During the March 11 Jones County Supervisors meeting, the board approved a request for bids for contract rock. The letting will take place on Tuesday, March 25, at 10 a.m.

   “It’ll be very similar to what last year’s quantities were,” noted County engineer Derek Snead, “a mix again of roadways, either 400 or 800 tons per mile.”

   The 800 tons of rock per mile will predominately be used on those roads that are wider, heavier traveled, and/or had surface stabilization treatment (magnesium chloride) in the past.

   “We also made a little more focused effort this year in particular on looking a little farther back in the history,” offered Snead.

   All of the motor grader territories, he said, have at least a couple of roads that haven’t been rocked in recent years.

   “That’s just kind of the nature of the beast when it comes to rock,” added Snead.

   When adding more rock to any roadway, he said they take into account traffic count, the condition of the road, type of traffic use, etc.

   “A lot of times those get more rock more often,” said Snead. “But at the same time, we still don’t want to go back. If we always ranked them (roads) on the basis of vehicle count and use, the same roads would get rock all of the time. It’s not always just a needs base. We try to get material on even the lower-traveled roads.”

   There are also some gravel roads in the county that are in need of rock, but are extremely hard to get to due to terrain, for example. These tend to be the narrower roads, the dead-end roads.

   “Since it is a little more difficult to get to, the quarries might set up the prices a little differently,” Snead warned the board. “Some of those prices could be a little more inflated. They might have to change some of their operations on these roads. Those prices might reflect that to some extent.”

   Those narrow roads, in the past, were typically handled internally with spot rock by a motor grader operator.

   “We did a lot of them on our own,” said Snead. “But at the end of the day, that 400 or 800 tons per mile just isn’t quite the same as the spot rock option.”

   He’s hoping the contract rock prices allow for rock on additional roads.

   “It’ll be roughly in that 80,000-ton range. Also, what we’ve done in the past and plan to do again this year, is see where these bids are at, let the remainder of this spring play out, and depending upon those prices that we see, there will be some flexibility as far as padding additional roads with the remainder of the rock.”