Commercial vehicle leasing company Dawsongroup has placed an order for 50 JCB Pothole Pros, which it will lease to local road authorities and their contractors.
The Pothole Pro was launched in January 2021 as a modified Hydradig wheel digger, with tools for cutting and clearing around potholes. It includes a hydraulic cutting tool, which the previous JCB Pothole Master, a modified 3CX backhoe, does not.
According to JCB, tests show that the JCB Pothole Pro can complete a pothole repair in less than eight minutes, four times faster than standard methods.
JCB had high hopes, but the initial start-up costs seemed a stumbling block for local authority budgets.
In October 2022, more than 18 months after the product was launched, Dawsongroup added six Pothole Pro machines to its inventory and became JCB’s official rental partner for the Pothole Pro. Then in January this year he bought five others and soon had them all on long-term leases with local councils. Now he has ordered 50.
Dawsongroup managing director Glen Carruthers said: “We only bought our first JCB Pothole Pro less than a year ago and the response has been amazing, with the entire current fleet on hire. We have placed this additional order simply to keep up with demand.”
JCB Municipalities Managing Director Ben Rawding said: “It’s great to see the success Dawsongroup is enjoying with the Pothole Pro. More and more local authorities, and the contractors working on their behalf, are recognizing that the Pothole Pro is the best way to fix Britain’s roads quickly and permanently, for the first time Now it’s easier than ever for UK authorities to put a JCB Pothole Pro on their network, whether in a city or in a rural county and the public will now begin to see its presence on the roads and streets of the UK.”
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