Engineer secures more than $1.43M of rock for stockpiles, resurfacing

Two bids for stockpile and granular resurfacing rock for the next fiscal year came in under the Jasper County engineer’s estimate, and the board of supervisors on April 18 approved both offers from resource supplier Martin Marietta Materials, which total more than $1.43 million.

Compared to the engineer’s estimates for stockpile and granular resurfacing rock — about $1 million and more than $652,000, respectively — the county saved more than $215,000. Although there were no other bids for the resurfacing rock, the stockpile rock received one other bid that was above the engineer’s estimate.

Jasper County Engineer Mike Frietsch said the rock purchases align with his office’s new Granular Roads Assessment and Maintenance Strategy (GRAMS).

The plan requires each gravel road to receive a set tons per mile of one- to one-and-one-eighth-inch roadstone per year, colloquially called “spot rock.” Much of the roadstone is allocated based on the annual average daily traffic (AADT) and truck percentage data, according to county documents.

There are 914 miles of gravel roads included in the GRAMS spot rock program. Here is how the county decides how much spot rock each road gets:

• Roads with an AADT greater than 100 or between 50 and 100 and with a truck percentage greater than 10 are considered stabilization candidates, and they will be allocated 125 tons of spot rock per mile.

• Roads with an AADT between 50 and 100 and with a truck percentage below 10 are considered reclamation candidates, and they will receive less at 100 tons of spot rock per mile.

• Roads that have been classified as resurfacing candidates and minimal maintenance candidates, along with roads that have an AADT between 30 and 50 or an AADT less than 30, will be allotted 50 tons per mile.

For more than $876,000, the county will receive 55,000 tons of spot rock to put in its stockpiles. Frietsch said this is about 75 percent of the rock required for the spot rock program next fiscal year, but it also includes rock for conservation staff. The remaining 25 percent will be pulled from the Sully or Ferguson mines.

“We’ll be building up stockpiles and having the successful bidder haul to those stockpile locations, then we’ll pull out of those,” Frietsch said. “It saves us a lot of time. The winter stockpile we did the same way this last year. By not having to run to the mine all the time, it really reduced our travel times.”

Bruening Rock Products submitted a stockpile rock bid of more than $1.19 million, which exceeded the engineer’s estimate.

At the cost of more than $562,000, the county will receive about 34,000 tons of resurfacing rock from Martin Marietta. Bruening did not submit a bid.

Resurfacing roads are classified in the GRAMS as having an AADT of 30 to 50. These candidates are grouped together for the county as a whole and then separated over a two-year cycle. Year One of this cycle generally covers the southern half of the county, enveloping a total of 170 miles of resurfacing roads.

Frietsch said the rock will be applied starting May 1.