Making the market: when Jim Dykes can't find a market for recycled aggregates in the Atlanta area, he sets about creating one

Construction & Demolition Recycling, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Brian Taylor, John Tessini, Martine Dion

Atlanta has been highly regarded as a thriving business climate for several decades, but don't tell Jim Dykes that it means doing business there is always easy.

Dykes, founder and owner of Dykes Paving, Norcross, Ga., has championed the cause of using recycled aggregates in the Atlanta region.

In the 35 years his company has been in business, Dykes has shifted the company's focus away from being purely a paving company and moved it toward the recycling of aggregates and other materials that can be used in paving applications. Jim has subsequently become a pioneer in aggregates recycling and is considered an expert in the field who is a frequent guest speaker at industry trade shows and association meetings throughout the country.

The company has met with several successes, but just as in other parts of the country, even in the thriving business climate of "Hotlanta," there have been barriers to overcome.

FROM THE GROUND UP Jim Dykes grew up learning the asphalt paving industry from his father, who Jim describes as "a paving contractor, politician and farmer," who at one time owned a company that operated 13 asphalt mixing plants.

But Jim once thriving company was disbanded after his father passed away, during a time when Jim was serving in the Air Force and taking college courses.

Rather than inheriting a company with established regional operations, Jim started our on his own with $5,000, one track and a desire to win paving and patching contracts.

Not long after starting Dykes Paving and Construction Co. Inc. in 1968, Jim began gravitating toward cold milling and other processes that involved the recycling of materials.

Finding milling and other recycling processes workable, efficient and ecologically sound, Jim has steered the company away from being a pure paving contractor and toward being a supplier of recycled aggregates and paving materials made with secondary materials.

PUSHING AN AGENDA

Although Jim was a believer early on that paving materials made with recycled content could compete effectively, convincing customers and potential customers has taken some creative effort.

In some cases, Dykes Paving has engaged in what retailers might call a "loss leader" strategy, making up-front investments and expenses to promote the use of recycled materials to state regulatory and specification officials, potential customers and even competing contractors and paving materials makers.

"Our first demonstration, we invited officials from the state DOT, the FHWA and other paving contractors--basically our competitors--to come out and look at it," says Jim, regarding the company's effort to introduce a paving material made from a 50/50 blend of natural and recycled aggregates. The effort paid off, as "some 300 attendees came to see it," recalls Jim.

Covert operations have also been part of Jim's tactics. After creating a cold patch asphalt product, Jim was having difficulty finding takers in the market to try out the material.

Working under cover of darkness, Jim began hit-mid-run missions at pothole-laden parking lots, patching holes with the Perma Patch product covertly, and following up at a later date to see if the property owners were satisfied with the patching job. "I guess they figured at first the 'pothole fairy' had visited them, until I showed up to explain it" quips Jim.

Even though Jim was questioned by authorities on one such after-hours visit, he nonetheless found this 'guerilla' tactic an effective way to establish a market for an unproven product.

Why go to all the trouble to develop and market recycled aggregates products? "I like doing new and innovative things," says Jim. "It gives me something I can direct my hyper-kinetic energy toward."

That energy has been needed, say Jim as acceptance of new products has seldom been gained easily. "It didn't turn that quickly from rejection to acceptance," he remarks, speaking of both private contractors and government purchasing and specification agencies.

But repeated successes with the material--sometimes high-profile ones--have helped turn former market preconceptions around. In terms of volume and publicity, Dykes Paving's role at the Turner Field job site (the baseball stadium built as part of Atlanta's 1998 Olympic Games project) marked one significant example.

Working as a sub-contractor to D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co., Greensboro, N.C., the two companies were able to turn the demolition of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and the adjacent construction of Turner Field in 1997 and 1998 into a case study for on-site concrete crushing.

The companies recycled 100,000 tons of concrete, using the entire amount as base material for the new parking lots surrounding Turner Field. The application prevented a tremendous amount of material from being hauled offsite as well as prevented the need to haul in new base rock.

SOMETHING NEW

Although some recycled aggregates markets are gaining solid footholds in Atlanta, Jim Dykes is far from complacent. Rather, he continues to direct his considerable energy toward developing yet more products using recycled materials,