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Show MODERN MACHINERY AID TO MAINTENANCE The best road in the long run is the hard road.. But there are many localities where the use of the hard road does not permit its cost to be an economy for the community. Hence the sand-clay, gravel, shell, and other oth-er types of roads, not hard surface, which are built. Such roads require constant main- tencance it they are to remain smooth. Formerly such work was done by teams. But modern ingenuity has provided road tools which can be applied ap-plied to trucks, with a great economy econ-omy of time, labor, and money. As an example, consider Kent County, Mich., where, according to the annual report of the County Road Commissioners, there are 252 miles of gravel roads, varying" in width from 10 to 16 feet, the total width of the grade varying from 20 feet to 30 feet. Nearly all the scraping and grading grad-ing work is taken care of by scrapers attached to trucks, which with the scraper attachment, travel about 10 or 12 miles per hour. Each truck does the work of six of seven teams. Nine trucks equipped with scrapers maintain an average of nearly 30 miles each. The quality of the work of this kind of equipment is said to be much better than with horse-drawn horse-drawn equipment, and it takes less supervision to look after this kind of maintenance organization. The gravel roads are kept smooth by the constant use of scrapers or graders, and by the application of thin layers of screened gravel where required. One-half inch to one inch of screened gravel is kept on the surface sur-face of the road all the i.iiMc; but scraping around to fill ruts and holes, it is possible to maintain a smooth road under a traffic of several thousand thou-sand vehicles a day. |