The Beauty of Mechanical Concrete® Is Simplicity

Aggregate-filled recycled tire cylinders create a long-lasting, low maintenance road subbase and offer a simple, practical tire recycling solution

The Meriwether County, Georgia Public Works department successfully completed a project this summer, employing recycled tires to upgrade a dirt road.  The majority of roads in Meriwether County are gravel. Logging trucks, ag trucks, residents and school buses all travel the roads and all tear the road up.

Facilitated by a state grant, the road was one of two the county repaired with Mechanical  Concrete®, (MC) a patented construction technology that uses recycled tire cylinders filled with aggregate to create a strong and sustainable road base.

The technology was created and patented by Sam Bonasso, former West Virginia Department of Highways Deputy Director. Bonasso, recently deceased, sold the patented Mechanical Concrete Technology in 2023 to Houston, Texas-based Century Road Solutions (CRS) partners Mike Getz, John Koonce and Don Wadleigh.

The tire cylinders—passenger car tires that have the sidewalls cut off — act as a geocell, confining the stone aggregate in column, providing lateral, load-bearing support and preventing the road base from washing away, CRS Chief Executive Officer, Mike Getz said.

Road durability depends on one major factor—keeping road base aggregate in place.
“This is one of the many reasons a Mechanical Concrete® road is second to none. Water does not affect mechanical concrete roads,” Getz said.

Earlier this year, Meriwether County contracted with CRS to build 1.12 miles of roads with Mechanical Concrete®. Getz explained that 1.12 miles of road will re-purpose over 26,000 recycled scrap tires.

For the first road installed in May, county road crews laid 3,500 tire cylinders down on top of the existing road and attached them together creating a grid-like structure that they filled with conventional stone aggregate.   As soon as the cylinders are full of aggregate it is a drivable road, Getz said.

Since the road was built, nearly 10 inches of rain has fallen.

“This is a road located next to a creek that would overflow and regularly wash out the road. But because the mechanical concrete system confines the aggregate  and the road is now higher, they don’t have any failures. It’s still performing flawlessly,” Getz said.

This marked the first implementation of the Mechanical Concrete method in Georgia, County Commissioner Jennifer Snelson said.

“It works!  It’s perfect…like riding on concrete,” Snelson said when she took her family out for a ride on the historically flood-prone gravel road three weeks after 5-6 inches of rain had fallen.

“Normally the road would be completely washed away after 3 inches of rain,” she said.

While a first for Georgia, Mechanical Concrete is not new.

Mechanical Concrete was first used in Morgantown, West Virginia in 2006 on a coal mining road that typically carries 200-400 coal trucks per day, each weighing 80,000 lbs.  These roads have logged more than 1.5 million truck passes and are still performing excellently today.

“Mechanical Concrete® prevents the lateral migration of road base aggregate caused by seeping water that creates cracks, potholes, ruts and shoulder erosion”, he said.

Potholes aren’t just annoying—they’re expensive, Getz said.

U.S. cities spend $2.6 billion per year on pothole repairs, Getz said, citing statistics compiled by insurance company surveys.

“With Mechanical Concrete®, cities can cut road maintenance costs by up to 75 percent, saving millions of dollars per year.”

In Guadalupe County, Texas, a road built with Mechanical Concrete® has gone over a decade with no potholes and no maintenance.

For the project, the County built two 1,000 ft. sections using conventional county road construction.  Mechanical Concrete was installed on a third 1,000 ft section. 3,000 ft were done in all.  Both conventional road construction sections needed repairs and resurfacing.  However, the Mechanical Concrete® road has continued to perform for more than ten years with no repairs, Getz said.

“A commissioner there has even called it ‘the best road in Texas’. This is exactly the kind of acknowledgment that showcases the potential of mechanical concrete,” Getz said.

Mechanical Concrete® has been approved by the West Virginia Department of Highways and successfully implemented in California, Arizona, Ohio, Idaho and Texas. It is currently being evaluated   for testing by the National Center or Asphalt Paving (NCAT), Getz said.

Purdue University has studied the Mechanical Concrete® system finding it improves load-supporting capacity, while also offering a sustainable reuse for waste tires.

Research on mechanical concrete has been conducted by other organizations like the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Mechanical Concrete® was selected in 2016 by ASCE’s Grand Challenge Infrastructure Innovation Contest for the “Green Engineering—Most Feasible” award.

In granting the award, ASCE noted that Mechanical Concrete® contributes to corporate ESG (Environmental Social Governance) goals and may qualify for carbon and green credits.

To bolster and identify the cost benefits and sustainable practices that lead to carbon credit generation, Century Roads Solutions is working with Rice University on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for certification for carbon credits.

LCAs play a critical role in carbon credits by providing the necessary data and verification to evaluate a product’s environmental impact across its entire lifecycle, from raw material extraction, production, and distribution to usage and disposal.

Mechanical Concrete ® uses waste tire-derived cylinders to confine stone aggregates and divert end-of-life tires from landfills, meeting LCA criteria.  In addition, the removed sidewalls are sold and used by farmers for silage providing 100 percent usage of the tire.

The company sources its raw materials locally whenever possible.  For example, the 35,000 tires used in Meriwether County, Georgia came from a Liberty Tire Recycling facility in Jackson, Georgia, reducing the number of miles traveled resulting in lower fuel consumption and decreased greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, Tire Reclaim, Cadwell, Idaho provided CRS with 2,000 tire cylinders for a  Mechanical Concrete® repair project on a heavily damaged road at a truck refueling station in Blackfoot, Idaho.

In addition to fuel savings, the Mechanical Concrete® process uses a low energy sidewall cutter to make the tire cylinders, requires no extraction, and has a shorter build time.

“We did the Georgia project in two days,” Getz said.

One of the market challenges CRS faces is resistance from road builders concerned about losing out on maintenance contracts because of MC’s longevity, Getz said.

The company has found success with private road owners in the oil industry as well as commercial and industrial road owners who run heavy trucks and see the long-term benefits.

“Right now, we’re working with a Texas company that has 34 acres that it wants to develop and the city is requiring them to use 10 acres for a retention pond.  We can offer them a load-bearing surface that is pervious and that dramatically reduces the retention pond requirement. That’s a win-win for everybody,” Getz said.

Getz summed it all up with – “Mechanical Concrete is the best way to repurpose end-of-life tires.” With a Texas county commissioner calling Guadalupe’s Mechanical Concrete® road “the best road in Texas” and a Georgia county commissioner saying “it works…it’s perfect”, CRS partners Getz, Koonce and Wadleigh are “more enthusiastic everyday”.

See more at  www.mechanicalconcrete.com 

© Scrap Tire News, September 2025