“Revolutionizing Pothole Repair”: JCB’s Pothole Pro Excavator Comes to U.S. (Video)

JCB has brought its Pothole Pro to the U.S., a three-in-one machine that the company says can reduce pothole repairs to 8 minutes.

The special attachment system on the company’s Hydradig 110W wheeled excavator can cut, crop and clean – completing a pothole repair or patch job in a fraction of the time it takes traditional methods. (Watch the Pothole Pro in action in the video at the end of this story.)

The work can be done from the cab, with no more need for hydraulic hammers or workers using jackhammers or circular saws. That increases worker safety, JCB says. It also aids in recycling materials and reducing energy use. The crew just needs to add asphalt after the Pothole Pro completes its tasks.

JCB rolled out the Pothole Pro in England in 2021 and has brought it to the U.S. for sale after being tested in municipalities in Pennsylvania. It says the machine can repair 299 cubic yards in a single shift and 6,540 cubic yards in a month, cutting costs in half.

“The speed of the mill head is definitely faster than anything I’ve utilized out on a jobsite, and the maneuverability was fantastic,” says Neil Stoltzfus, roadmaster of West Earl Township in Pennsylvania. “This would typically have been a three-machine operation, and instead the Pothole Pro was able to accomplish the task with one machine, without changing any attachments.”

Cut

JCBThe excavator has a 25,258-pound operating weight and runs on a 109-horsepower JCB Ecomax engine. It has a travel speed of 25 mph.

Attached to the rear of the excavator by a skid steer hitch is a planer that can cut up to 2 feet wide and down to 6.7 inches. JCB notes that the average pothole is about 1.6 inches deep.

The planer also has side-shift adjustment of up to 4.26 feet, which enables the excavator to stay in position on the curb while milling up to a full lane of roadway.

“Hydraulic tilt and depth control provide a consistent depth for larger patches,” the company says.

Crop

JCBOn the two-piece boom of the excavator is attached JCB’s 360-Degree Multi-tool on a X12 Steelwrist tiltrotator for cropping the area cut by the planer.

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The excavator operator can rotate the attachment to get the angle needed to create a square edge and uniform hole. The standard cropping tool is 16 inches wide.

Clean

JCBThe final stage of the pothole repair is the cleanup. The excavator uses a 4-foot-wide sweeper-bucket combination, which the operator accesses by rotating the Multi-tool. The attachment can sweep and collect the leftover material to be loaded into a truck and hauled away for recycling.

The broom sweeps the material, while the bucket scoops it up for dumping. The attachment has built-in dust suppression.

Results

JCBThe Pothole Pro has been developed in the UK and tested with local government road departments. One agency in England was able to cut repairs that normally would take three years down to four months.

“The local authority has repaired a staggering 13,080 (cubic yards) of road with the JCB Pothole Pro in just 130 days – an area equivalent to eight Olympic-sized swimming pools,” the company says. “Using traditional methods, this task would have taken a staggering 1,040 days or almost three years.”

Watch

To see the Pothole Pro in action, check out the JCB video below: