JCB has announced that Stoke-on-Trent City Council has become the first local authority in the UK to take delivery of one of the manufacturer’s PotholePro machines.
The machine, which JCB revealed can repair potholes ‘four times quicker than standard methods’, was launched earlier this year and Stoke-on-Trent City Council played a role in its testing.
The PotholePro can repair a pothole in less than eight minutes. The project to develop the product has been personally led by JCB chairman Lord Bamford, who said, “It was great to meet with the council and hear what a positive impact the PotholePro had made on the roads of Stoke-on-Trent. Our vision for this machine was to fix Britain’s roads quickly and permanently and this is just what the JCB machine is doing right on our doorstep. I’m delighted with the results.”
The machine was handed over to councillor Daniel Jellyman, cabinet member for infrastructure, regeneration and heritage, who said, “We’re absolutely delighted to have our own JCB PotholePro. We’ve been fortunate to help JCB with the development of the machine over the past year, so we’ve been able to test it out extensively on our roads already and be at the forefront of developing new technologies and ways of working to tackle a problem motorists face up and down the country.
“During that time, we’ve been able to fix 7,000 sqm of patches, which is the equivalent of Wembley Stadium’s football pitch. We’ve done that in just 80 days. Using traditional methods this would have taken 758 days, so the work rate and success of this machine speaks for itself.”
