Digger company JCB has completed a ‘successful trial’ of its Pothole Pro repair machine on the M6 motorway.
The British firm said its new Pothole Pro can repair a damaged road in just eight minutes. A spokeswoman for the company told Motoring Research this is a huge improvement over the manual process. She explained that Stoke City Council takes an average of one hour to fill a pothole.
The all-in-one machine is equipped with a cutter, sweeper/bucket and hydraulic cropping tool. It can cut defects, crop pothole edges and clean holes, streamlining tasks that would normally be completed by hand.
JCB claims the machine can repair up to 250 square metres per day, equivalent to 700 potholes per month. It also has a 25mph top speed, which enables it to move from site to site easily.
The trial was part of a ‘national demonstration programme to show how the innovative machine repairs potholes permanently’. The Pothole Pole repaired the M6 motorway between junctions 14 and 15 during two routine night-time lane closures.
‘It filled potholes so quickly, we ran out of tar’
“The JCB Pothole Pro really did live up to expectations in the fast lane of the M6. It filled the potholes so quickly that we ran out of tar,” claimed Ben Rawding, a member of the product team at JCB.
“It was done so quickly and efficiently, it could have filled so many more holes. The main thing is that repairs were done rapidly and permanently by the JCB Pothole Pro.”
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