Marathon Solution
Let’s get the concrete to your remote job site
Marathon Construction Services is a drilled shaft foundation company located in Tavares, Florida. Starting in 2012, Marathon brought together more than 60 years of combined experience in the drilled shaft foundation industry. The team at Marathon is often faced with the ever-expanding needs of the utility industry and is committed to taking on those needs to satisfy their customer. Marathon was recently faced with a demanding project of the Segment B portion of the 500K powerline foundation rebuild.
This project took place in both public and private land in the Everglades and Holey Land wildlife areas. The powerline rebuild stretches over hundreds of miles and for the segment awarded to Marathon, this included both public protected land and privately owned farmland. The environment and location made this especially challenging for Marathon as many of the powerline foundations were in remote areas far from any ready-mix concrete plant.
“No other concrete supplier wanted to touch this,” explained Michael Day, VP of Operations for Marathon Construction Services. “We are drilling foundations anywhere from 30 to 50 feet deep and it’s in the Everglades so it’s a very difficult project, it’s very remote.”
In order to get the concrete to the powerline foundations, Ozinga’s Quality Control department in South Florida developed a mix that would be “put to sleep” in dump trucks after being mixed at the central mix plant. By putting the concrete to sleep, they essentially created a mix that would last six to eight hours, allowing it to get to the Everglades and Holey Land locations without compromising the mix quality.
Depending on the exact location of the powerline foundations, the concrete had to travel 70-80+ miles from the nearest central plant. Before reaching the pour site, dump trucks took the “sleeping” concrete to a halfway location where it met Ozinga’s patented technology, TranzLoader. The proprietary technology uses dump trucks to pour the concrete into the TranzLoader’s 12-yard capacity tub and onto a conveyer where it’s loaded into ready-mix trucks. From there, the concrete is woken back up and taken to its final destination.
While other suppliers may have seen this project as impossible, Ozinga was eager to work with Marathon to find a solution. Don Kremke, Manager for Ozinga Fleet Operations and Plant Maintenance for South Florida, stated, “Every generation at Ozinga I see another step forward in innovation and we do not believe in failure, we just want to know what it’s going to take to get the job done.”
Together, there’s nothing we can’t handle.
