Cooking pot becomes maintenance tool

Yes, you read that headline correctly! ADOT’s Cordes Junction Maintenance Unit has put a discarded cooking pot to good use.

Technician Patrick Thompson found the cooking pot while removing litter and trash from highways. His unit, which is responsible for patching smaller potholes, occasionally uses old patching material that can be difficult to work with. “Once the old material sits, it becomes rock hard,” he said. 

Cutting the bags open and trying to keep the material malleable by blasting it with torches could lead to damaged material.

The cooking pot gave him an idea.

Thompson put the older material inside the large cooking pot and used the torch on the sides of the pot. The material warmed up steadily, instead of getting too oily or damaged, and it worked especially well in colder weather.

“Instead of the torch being directly on the patch material itself, the material is in the pot,” says technician Monte Smith. “It’s like cooking something on a stove.”

The cooking pot makes it easy to move material, too. The unit simply dumps the material from the cooking pot into the pothole. They’ve since used up all of their older patching material, but the cooking pot is ready to go when they need it next.

“We’re not burning off a layer of a patch that we need,” Monte said, “and we’re wasting less material because it all stays in the pot and is ready to go for the next hole.”