Video: Road Less Traveled

Along an 11-mile stretch of power lines among farmlands in northeastern Illinois, a John Deere 333E Compact Track Loader (CTL) works in tandem with a Deere wheel loader to install a temporary road. The larger loader unloads flatbed trailers of big wooden mats, while the CTL quickly assembles them into a road. A few hundred feet behind the crew, the power company’s boom trucks are already at work, upgrading transmission towers from an aging wooden H-frame design to more modern steel ones. The matting provides eco-friendly access for the trucks. Midwest Access Solutions (MAS) will install 11,000 mats for this stretch alone.