Dig this pit breaker! How JCB’s giant £200,000 excavator repairs road craters in just EIGHT minutes – as over half of Britain’s councils are expected to invest in the 13-tonne machine
The target has been identified: an oval pit about four feet from the curb on a residential street. It’s not much bigger than the lid of a garbage can.
But like so many other imperfections in our pitted roads, it can cost a motorist thousands of pounds in repair costs – or a cyclist’s life.
Fortunately, there is a possible solution to the pit plague in the form of 13 tonne JCB machines.
At £200,000, JCB’s Pothole Pro might seem like an expensive way to fix a few potholes.
But while traditional jackhammer repairs can take half a day, the Pothole Pro cuts away the damaged road surface before trimming the edges of the hole and cleaning it in eight minutes.
Completed: The final stage requires traditional skills
Sharp Edge: Pothole Pro straightens the sides of the scraped hole
A team of four workmen can then fill the gap – and the whole process is completed in half an hour.
I spent a chilly morning in Stoke-on-Trent trying to find out exactly how it works.
I grabbed two yellow handles on the side of the vehicle and hoisted myself three feet into the cabin.
The business end of the machine can rotate, allowing it to tackle multiple potholes without having to move.
The Pothole Pro’s 52 tungsten-tipped teeth grind out the pit to leave a neat, square pit.
Pieces of the road surface are swept up for recycling and the yellow arm of the machine then travels back over the crater twice – brushing it and spraying a thin layer of water to suppress dust.
Next, it’s the ‘cropping’ process. It’s critical to make sure the sides of the crater are square and straight or the new road surface won’t hold.
Holes will again cause the pit to form.
For this task, a 400 mm hardox steel blade emerges from the extendable arm and attacks the road surface with a pressure of 30 tons.
One more sweep and the neatly cut pit is ready for workmen to fill with 140C tar.
The process takes less than half an hour and leaves a neat rectangular spot.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council was the first local authority to purchase a Pothole Pro in November 2021 and it has since said it has repaired seven years of road defects in 12 months.
The machines are said to fill up to 50 holes a day, but Ben Rawding, JCB’s general manager Pothole Pro, tells me his record is 80.
He said, ‘I’ve had people say, ‘We’ve got one that needs to be done, can you come over here’.’
Targeted: The hole is marked
Whole again: The Mail’s Fiona Parker and the filled pit
JCB hopes that more than half of municipalities will be using a Pothole Pro – either renting or buying – by the end of the year.
A council told the company it was reducing pit removal costs from an average of £60 per crater to £30, due to the reduced time and labor costs.
The Daily Mail is campaigning to end the UK’s pothole scourge, which is costing motorists millions of pounds in repairs and putting cyclists at risk of injury or death.
The latest figures released last year by the Asphalt Industry Alliance suggest councils would need £12 billion and an additional nine years to tackle the current road repair backlog. At least there’s one less pothole to worry about now.