A Note from Polyco: We have enjoyed working with independent asphalt consultant Skip Brown, bringing SigmaBond to Northern California. Read more about why he raves about Polyco’s product to his clients. 

My family had an asphalt business for over 70 years, started by my father, so I’ve been in this industry my whole life. I’ve been in the field so long I wore out more than 50 pairs of paving boots! I’ve retired from fieldwork, and now, I consult with clients about the care, maintenance, and proper repair of asphalt pavements. 

I first learned about Polyco’s product when I met Bob Rivers last fall. SigmaBond incorporates tire rubber unlike any other asphalt mixture in the market.

Putting rubber in asphalt has two main benefits: 

1. The rubber helps the asphalt be flexible, preventing cracking longer than non-rubberized asphalt mixtures.
2. It offers an alternative to discarding tires, preventing landfills from filling up and reducing toxic fumes from burying or burning scrapped rubber.

Many agencies in California use crumb rubber gap-graded asphalt that has a reduced aggregate structure resulting in a pavement with increased porosity. This type of asphalt works well for California highways as a top layer over dense graded asphalt because it absorbs water and reduces tire-spray. But for roads without adequate structure and cracked dense graded asphalt, absorbed water enters the subgrade resulting in failure of the surface. 

My clients need a rubberized dense graded asphalt pavement which will stay flexible longer—reducing cracking and precluding water from entering the subgrade. This is where SigmaBond performs beyond other asphalt solutions. Polyco achieved this by completely digesting recycled tire rubber and asphalt into a homogeneous liquid state using their proprietary Rapid Digestion Process (RDP)—producing SigmaBond. 

The proof is in the pavement. Projects paved 5-7 years ago in Southern California that used SigmaBond, still have no cracks reflecting from the underlying cracked pavement.

I’m proud to promote SigmaBond to my clients. Three projects in Northern California have already been awarded that will use SigmaBond—in Granite Bay, Rancho Murieta and Oakdale. With a competitive cost and better performance than other solutions, SigmaBond was a no-brainer for these projects and will be for many more. As I have been known to say, fix the pig; don’t just put lipstick on it.  SigmaBond does that.