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Wednesday, March 09, 2022

Wonderful. An asphalt shortage in Tennessee

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) says the Midstate is seeing more potholes than usual and Tennessee can't get the asphalt and contractors they need to solve this problem. 

TDOT told FOX 17 News it's a perfect storm of events with more freezing temperatures and rainfall and the roads in the area have reached the end of their life span.

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I was taking Lisa over to her folk's house in Portland last week to visit. Her back is so bad I habitually try to avoid any bumpy spots in the road - patched potholes, new potholes, whatever. I stay in my lane, but I'm all over that motherfucker.
As I was driving through Westmoreland, a cop fell in right behind me and I thought, "Wonderful, I'm going to get pulled over for a sobriety test," as I'm dodging and swerving, until I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the cop following my path exactly.

13 comments:

  1. I thought PA roads were bad growing up there but Tennessee roads would give them a run for their money. I thought Kentucky must be shelling I-65 from the size of the craters in the highway.

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    1. Seriously? You literally mean the roads in Tennessee are worse than in PA? I'm not questioning you, Gerry, I just always thought PA roads were the worse that could be found. At least they were in all of MY travels.

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    2. kind of depends on where in pa your are, around any big cities- wish you luck and hope you don't lose a car/truck to a pot hole. around altoona way, the roads are not bad at all. hell, this place has the best snow removal I ever seen done by the state.
      rather nice change to see that. other areas not so much. again it depends on who is on the road crew

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    3. I one parked my '73 Mustang in a pothole. I mean literally, the entire car was in the pothole. Occurred on Rt.66 near the 356 intersection. Wish I had had a camera. Could have easily have passed as a bomb crater.

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  2. Asphalt comes from oil. Pedo Joe and his gang cut US production and just stopped Russian imports of oil. There are literally thousands of commonly used and needed products that come from oil. All of those products will become more expensive and harder to get. All part of the criminal lefts plans to destroy our economy and the country. Remember....they hate us...and want us dead.

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  3. Probably a month before asphalt plants open up here in West Virginia. Meanwhile we make do with cold patch that washes out in a rain
    Daryl

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  4. Talking to the purchasing manager for a major paving company in the Chicago area, and he said something very similar -- there's very little asphalt available. There are new asphalt plants mostly built in eastern Nebraska and southern Illinois, but very little heavy crude available.

    Seems when the XL Pipeline was a done deal, Canada entered into long-term deals with other countries to sell them the tar sand oil. The XL was supposed to be for supplying US, who did not want the long term deals, but would settle for what would be left over. (Where the original pipeline merged with the new XL, the existing pipeline down to the Gulf is too small to take both feeds, so some would have to be taken off in Nebraska and some pushed out on the Illinois spur, and it would be at a great price, since Canada couldn't do anything else with it.)

    Same with diesel, heating oil and jet fuel. Canadian tar sand oil is so heavy it's great for that, too.

    Fortunately, we got Trump kicked out and dodged that bullet. I was getting so tired of winning anyway. Love me that $5+ diesel. Probably way more than that -- regular gas was $4.49 locally, and I didn't even want to drive past the truck stop and see how bad diesel is.

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  5. What Dan said, especially the last sentence.

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  6. Asphalt shortage?
    let's import some asphalt from venezuela.

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  7. Can you get a bumper sticker that says "Official LEO Pathfinder" ?

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  8. Cop didn't want to spill his coffee. If he's from here, he may have grown up doing that shit, too. I do. In the country, roads can get bad; what & how fast they do something depends on the state budget at the time.
    I can say I've never seen the Interstates this bad since I was a kid here in the '70s. TN used to have a rating in the trucker magazines as about the best roads in the nation. Still not as bad as some I've seen, traveling being part of my job, but bad. To be frank, they've been on it when weather allows. My shop is in Fairview, and I-40 west of Trashville has been undergoing constant pothole filling. Not repaving yet, and not perfect, but I'd rather hit a too-high asphalt fill than some of the holes I was hitting 2 weeks ago. Some were enough to threaten controllability.
    --Tennessee Budd

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  9. "I stay in my lane, but I'm all over that motherfucker"

    Great T-shirt slogan.

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