Tim Lorenzen and Myron Mullett, who have over 40 years collectively in excavation and manufacturing, officially founded TerraTec Industries in November 2009. The company is located in Westcliffe, Colorado, approximately 75 miles southwest of Colorado Springs.
TerraTec’s initial offering is the AggreScreed™, an expandable bulldozer blade attachment that essentially creates stakeless road grading, resulting in significant savings in time, labor and materials costs. It is the brainchild of Mullett, who conceived of the idea of a stakeless road grading process when faced with laying 90 miles of road in 2004. Debuted in Equipment World magazine’s January 2010 edition, the AggreScreed has a potential full return on investment within the first 10 miles of road on which it is used.
Additionally the first of at least three subsequent TerraTec products will also appear in 2010 including GPS adaptability. Other models in the planning stages are a bulldozer blade attachment that would adjust from 10 to 15 feet wide, and a fixed bulldozer blade attachment for skid steers, designed specifically for use in gravel screeding trails or large shoulders. Finally, TerraTec is concepting a trailer capable of hauling the 6,000-pound AggreScreed at full width, so it won’t have to be retracted for transport.
Mullett has also been named by Equipment World magazine as a one of 12 Contractor of the Year finalists.
In 2004, Myron Mullett, owner of Mullett Excavating, Westcliffe, Colorado, was faced with a multiyear military contract to lay gravel on 90 miles of road in Southern Colorado’s Fort Carson’s training area at Pinon Canyon. The project required an average of six inches of gravel with a two percent crown on a 32-foot-wide road, capable of handling military equipment including tanks. He calculated the tight-tolerance job would require driving three rows of stakes, something he wasn’t looking forward to. So he began to think of a better way.
His first prototype for a bulldozer blade attachment that would hold grade without stakes involved placing adjustable skids on each end of a box blade. But that didn’t quite do it – the gravel still went under the skids. So he added a plow device to each side of the bulldozer blade that directed the gravel inwards and away from the skids. With the plows keeping the gravel in front of the blade, as the gravel passed underneath, the bulldozer blade edge acted as a gravel screed, while the skids rode along the subgrade, always keeping the bulldozer blade attachment precisely at grade. And that was a “eureka” moment. In testing his invention on the job, Mullett says his crew laid nearly 18,000 tons of gravel in 10 hours. And, because of his idea – now the AggreScreed sold under the TerraTec Industries brand – he says his stakeless roads are by far the best he’s ever built.
For more information about TerraTec Industries and its stakeless road grading products, contact Tim Lorenzen.
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