For those who work with maintaining roads, the lure of a too-good-to-be-true product can be overwhelming.
For John Olson, director of public works for Hutchinson, Minn., taking a chance on the next best thing has turned his town into a how-to example for the rest of Minnesota.
“I didn’t know anything about RePLAY to start with,” Olson told a crowd of about 50 at the Parade of Roads, hosted by the City of Hutchinson, AURI and the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council. “And to be frank, I was skeptical because a lot of things come our way, and people try to sell us a lot of snake oil.”
Olson and the city of Hutchinson use several ag-based products to maintain the roads and surfaces. He used the “Parade of Roads” event to highlight three current projects in the city and to explain the value he sees in the products for his roads. The products highlighted July 13 included:
- RePLAY Oil Seal and Preservation Agent
- Opti-Seal Concrete Preservation Agent
- Biostripe, a renewable striping solution for roads and parking lots
Among those in attendance were county engineers and commissioners, farmers, researchers and Minnesota representatives Paul Torkelson (16B), Dean Urdahl (18A), Tony Jurgens (54B) and staff members for both Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn) and U.S. representative Collin Peterson (D-Minn).
MSR&PC has invested in several products such as the ones on display at the Parade of Roads as an attempt to open new markets for soybean producers.
