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Bobcatalog 2012

Right attachments are a big advantage in competitive market

Asphalt paving contractor depends on a Bobcat planer, angle broom, sweeper and scarifier

Matt Ambrose

An assortment of dependable attachments paired with Bobcat tool carriers helps Matt Ambrose adapt to changing economic conditions.

A job-matched group of Bobcat® attachments — planer, angle broom, sweeper and scarifier — have worked out well for an asphalt paving company operating in a very competitive business.

“We’ve had good success with these attachments,” says Matt Ambrose, owner of Ambry Asphalt, Mansfield, Ohio. “We use them frequently and they have proven to be durable and reliable.”

A dozen years ago, Ambrose worked for a large paving company that turned down driveway jobs because its equipment was too large. That’s when he saw an opportunity to start his own business.

“Doing driveways was easy compared to what I had been doing for the company,” he says. “Once I learned the business side, I was able to put together a solid plan to move forward.”

Adjusting to the economy
Along the way the economy impacted his strategy, but Ambrose had the equipment to make adjustments from residential to commercial and industrial to state work. Today, about 70 percent of the jobs the company does are government projects.

“To bigger firms, the jobs we do are considered small; to us, they are real nice-sized projects,” says Ambrose, when speaking of installing streets, 100-foot bridge approaches, parking lots and other similar jobs. “They fit our equipment perfectly.”

His power units include two Bobcat skid-steer loaders with high-flow auxiliary hydraulics and a CT445 compact tractor, all purchased from Bobcat of Wooster. Out on the jobsite, Ambrose and his two dozen employees depend on these Bobcat tool carriers and attachments to make work easier and more efficient:

24-inch planer. “It does an excellent job of milling around items such as utilities in the street,” Ambrose says. He uses it most often with the S330, a machine that does a good job of holding the planer in place. The rear frame wheels also provide support for the very productive planer.

84-inch angle broom. This handy attachment is used in step one of cleaning up the millings, according to the system used by Ambry Asphalt. “We use it to windrow the millings in one direction so the material can either be picked up by the planer on its next pass or removed by the sweeper,” Ambrose says.

72-inch sweeper. Picking up millings and other debris is done very efficiently with this attachment, notes Ambrose. It became even more useful when he added the gutter brush option.

“It paid for itself on the first job,” he says. “Instead of having someone with a blower kick out material from against the curb, the brush, with its very tough bristles, is the way to go. I would encourage anyone doing street work to buy a gutter brush. The angle broom and sweeper attachments are the perfect pair for asphalt cleanup.”

Scarifier. When a driveway or parking lot is too hard to loosen up with a tooth bucket, Ambrose turns to the scarifier. “The five teeth are spaced farther apart than those on a tooth bucket so they can do a better job when it comes to preparing an existing stone surface for grading,” he says.

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