U.S. 421 Bulks Up North Carolina

Mon September 10, 2001
Giles Lambertson

The company widening and straightening five miles of U.S. 421 in west-central North Carolina is friendly. That might seem frivolous to say, but both the environment and the people affected by the road-building project benefit from the attitude.

The company is H.B. Rowe and Co. Inc. It is moving tons of reddish earth to improve a roadway that is busiest on certain weekends.

On those weekends, during the season, thousands of motorists flood the highway headed for the NASCAR Winston Cup speedway near North Wilkesboro where Jeff Gordon and friends drive round and round at frightful speeds.

The widened highway will let NASCAR fans get to the races more easily. U.S. 421 is four lanes all the way from Winston-Salem to North Wilkesboro with the exception of 10 to 12 mi. (16 to 19 km) on either side of Interstate 77, which cuts north and south through the state.

The Rowe project, and similar work by other contractors, will widen the roadway in that area.

Rowe is well along in its leg of the project, which began one year ago. The North Carolina DOT contract is for $29.2 million.

“We’re wide open,” said Cecil Douglas, Rowe project superintendent, as he bumped from site to site in his four-wheel-drive Dodge Ram. About 60 employees and subcontractor employees are on the job remaking 5 mi. (8 km) of the gently rolling terrain.

The project runs west from about .5 mi. (.8 km) west of I-77 to the point where a subcontractor, Mustard Seed Construction Inc., is leveling a hill and adjacent low area. Caterpillar scrapers are building a huge earthen fill there, with a small John Deere 750C dozer carefully trimming the edges from top to bottom.

Home offices of both Rowe and Mustard Seed Construction are in Mount Airy, NC, a town located north of the job site near the Virginia border. The town is reputed to be the model for Mayberry, the fictional TV setting for the gentle humor of North Carolina native Andy Griffith.

Given that heritage, a back-slapping friendly attitude comes naturally to Rowe, or at least one might draw that conclusion from talking to Douglas. The naturally congenial superintendent has established the kind of rapport with residents of the work area that has them periodically taking pies and cakes to the job-site trailer.

“That’s unheard of on a road job,” said Douglas of the community acceptance. “I’m tickled pink. But you’ve got to represent your company well.”

The company benefits from the relationship in other ways. Waste pit sites on private property have not been difficult to locate, for instance.

And Rowe’s job-site trailer — where Secretary Janie Douglas does the on-site paperwork — sits on an acre or two of land that another local landowner simply gave to the company for use during the project.

That site, incidentally, is across the future four-lane highway from a gated mansion that’s situated among trees on a hillside. That neighbor happens to be Junior Johnson, one of NASCAR’s legends. Johnson has not been put off by the inconvenience of construction at his front door, periodically stopping by to chat with Douglas.

Phillips and Jordan Co. of Robbinsville, NC, began the project last year by clearing trees from the right of way. Last fall, Rowe crews began to move and shape some 3.25 million cu. yds. (2.5 million cu m) of red earth. About a million cubic meters of it has been moved so far.

“We want to try to get all the yardage moved this year if we can,” Douglas said. Caterpillar scrapers do much of the hauling. Cat 375B and 320 excavators are among the pieces of equipment scraping up the dirt. At one of the sites worked on in June, a Cat 621F spread dirt on a future bridge approach, with a Cat D8N dozer moving it into the path of a Cat 815 steel-wheeled dozer that flattened and packed it.

As the D8 backed away to position itself for another slice, the machine was obscured by dust that rose from its clanking treads.

“Dust is a big problem,” Douglas said. “We have two water trucks going all the time.” Still, with heavy equipment carving the earth across 5 mi. (8 km), the trucks don’t always keep up with their dust suppression.

Rock is the other problem encountered by Rowe, though Douglas stopped short of characterizing it as a major obstacle. Still, the contractor has hit enough granite to keep the company’s own blaster, Lloyd Hicks busy.

On a segment near the east end of the work where the outcrop of rock was heaviest, a Komatsu PC 300LC excavator repeatedly whammed its steel fingers into a granite shelf, chipping and collecting just enough rock to create a temporary passageway for off-road trucks.

A length of drainage pipe has been laid at the bottom of a blasted granite ridge and is being covered with select backfill. Volvo A25 and A35 trucks and a Moxy MT30 unit will use the chipped roadway to bring in the soil.

Across existing U.S. 421 from the Komatsu chipped rock sits a Simplicity rock shaker. Rowe brought it in to reduce the blasted granite chunks for use in crushed stone and rip-rap applications.

To say the company is building five miles of four-lane highway misstates the scope of the job. It also is building an equal length of secondary roads. Some parallel the main roadway and run for .75 mi. (1.2 km) or farther to serve adjacent properties. They are 52 ft. (15 m) wide from ditch to ditch.

A Champion 720A grader gave final shape to one of these service roads in late June in advance of a layer of stone.

Other secondary roads are realignments of connecting roads. One of these connectors passes above Hunting Creek before it meets U.S. 421 to the north. To realign that road, Rowe had to make a cut of at least 40 ft. (12 m) through solid granite, a stone face that was then covered with soil and seeded.

One hundred yards (91 m) farther north on the road, a two-lane bridge is being erected across the creek. Smith-Rowe Inc., another Mount Airy firm, is building the 180-ft. (55-m) bridge that sits on piers too far above the stream to fish from. A Link-Belt LS118 crane lifted pre-cast concrete girders into place.

Numerous Hispanic workers of Smith-Rowe were moving materials during the pouring of the bridge’s deck. They are part of a growing Spanish-speaking presence on the job.

Douglas has worked with the foreign-born employees for some time, he said, some following him to work with Rowe from Douglas’ previous position with a different contractor. Douglas is beginning to learn the language.

The trucking subcontractor on the job, Latif Trucking of Wilkesboro, is a minority contractor.

The asphalt contractor on the project is Carl Rose and Son of Elkin, NC.

Several double bridges of various dimensions will be built for the main highway, and 10 box culverts will carry streams and runoff beneath it. One of the culverts is a 10-by-14-ft. (3 by 4 m) double-barreled structure on Swan Creek.

With a new roadbed towering above it and earth being moved all around it, that stream in June was still clear and minnow-laden. Such care in controlling erosion and material is recognized by state officials monitoring the job.

“They’ve made great efforts to meet and exceed the expectations of our environmental people and of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources people,” said Billy Trivette, DOT resident engineer from the Statesville office.

“That is their reputation,” he said. “They have been known to be environmentally conscious on a lot of their projects.”

Adrian Jarrell, office manager of Rowe for 15 years, said that being protective of water and air around work projects comes naturally when you live in one of the geologically oldest areas in the country. “People are just brought up that way,” he said.

“We try to be conscious of that. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, but we try to break as few as possible,” he added.

Officials first became aware of this company consciousness when Rowe completed a flood control project for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It entailed widening of the river bed, dike work and hauling “huge amounts of rip-rap,” Jarrell said.

Rowe was founded in Mount Airy 40 years ago by Henry B. Rowe. The firm principally contracts jobs in western North Carolina and western Virginia. The grading contractor works on municipal and commercial projects as well as DOT highway jobs.

Annual business volume is in the $10 to $15 million range. Gerhard Pilcher is president.

DOT officials said the U.S. 421 project is on schedule. Douglas noted that “only two days were missed last winter, and those were by choice. When you have rock and waste pits, there’s no reason not to work.”

All in all, the project has been a good one for Rowe, Douglas observed, characterized by such things as there being no need for a borrow pit on the job. And there being plenty of friendly neighbors.

This story also appears on Construction Equipment Guide.