Arizona Contractor & Community Winter 2015 V4 I4 | Page 43

1955 - Nesbitt Contracting Celebrates 60 Years - 2015 Arizona Pavement Profiling A third Nesbitt entity, Arizona Pavement Profiling, Inc., was launched in 1981, shortly after the acquisition of the company's first milling machine. Asphalt milling was then a new process that was just being adopted around the country. Nesbitt foresaw milling technology as the answer to a number of challenges facing a growing region to build, repair, and maintain an increasingly heavy traffic load on municipal streets, highways, airports, and other applications. They were one of the first companies in the industry to recognize the value of recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) and its potential to save time and money in road building and repair. Initially, there were challenges with having public engineers, cities, and competitors accept this new technique. With time, asphalt recycling became more universally accepted. Scottsdale was one of the first municipalities to embrace the new technology and contracted with Nesbitt and Arizona Pavement Profiling to perform the work on its streets. “Nesbitt is a pioneer in the industry,” Jerry Jones, former Arizona manager of Crist Machinery, said in 1990. “There are always a few who will try innovations and are always a step ahead of the game.” Recycling asphalt falls into this category. Arizona Pavement Profiling has been combining 50 percent recycled asphalt with virgin materials since the early 1980s. “We’v