TnT Grading

Nestled against a rocky hillside in North County, San Diego, a new housing tract is being developed that has all of the makings of a blue print for the future. With prime real estate all but exhausted for much of San Diego County, innovative developers and equally ingenious contractors are setting new standards for creative earthmoving projects.

If cutting and filling of pads to grade for a one hundred and three unit subdivision sounds ordinary, it is because T-N-T Grading has made this difficult rock job look easy.

Only by standing on a newly formed housing pad and staring up at the gently curving path of the new tract that reaches into the hills, can you fully appreciate the complex task that T-N-T Grading has successfully undertaken. Much of the property that is left in San Diego County is an equal mixture of solid rock and soil. There is no better example than this new San Marcos housing tract that is quickly taking shape. “We are going to see more and more of this type of work,” explains Bob Vlach, co-owner and estimator for T-N-T Grading, “The majority of the prime building land is gone.” With a job estimated at 450,000 cubic yards, nearly 325,000 of that is solid rock. The practice of Drill & Shoot, Crush, Haul and Place is becoming the rule and not the exception. “Our challenge was to create a solution that uses limited space, has the least impact on the surrounding community, minimizes traffic and dust, and is the most economical,” Vlach further explains. There is such a high concentration of rock that T-N-T chose four mobile crushers to take the blasted material and break it down into six inch minus material that would be used to bring the project to design grade. “The on-site crushers are an ideal solution. Either fixed or mobile crushers allow us to work continuously and eliminate the need to haul the material back and forth to an off-site facility. This creates a solution that benefits both the developer and the surrounding community by minimizing the traffi c and dust that is created with the off-site work.” Vlach adds.

T-N-T Grading turned to Red Mountain Machinery to provide the additional heavy equipment needed to complete this job. A D10N dozer was used to handle shot material and to work with a 992C to load the 777’s which haul to the crushers. The crushers are located next to another shot site where another D10N maintained the crusher load piles. Two Caterpillar 345BL Hydraulic Excavators were used to load three portable crushers. Once crushed to six inch minus, the material was loaded by a Caterpillar 966G Wheel Loader into two Terex TA-30, 30 ton Articulated Trucks that haul the material to the fi ll portions of the site.

As with any job, equipment downtime is an issue that can affect the entire schedule and ultimately the bottom line. Red Mountain has invested heavily in its Service Department to ensure the fastest possible response and repair time with the most professional, highly skilled mechanics. “The Red Mountain Service Department is the most professional of all of the rental companies that I have worked with,” comments Barry Blanchard, co-owner and head of operations for T-N-T Grading, “In terms of response time, Red Mountain gets quality field repairs done faster than anyone in the industry”. Red Mountain’s impressive response time is the result of only service its own fleet, unlike equipment dealers, who work on customer-owned machines. It is this focus that allows Red Mountain to provide a superior response time.

When all is said and done, this new housing tract will show no signs of the complex system used to create it. That will be the ultimate testament to the quality of the equipment used and to the professional work that T-N-T Grading puts into every job. T-NT Grading’s expertise and ingenuity along with Red Mountain’s quality earth moving equipment and service makes this difficult job look easy.