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Road Drag

Photograph courtesy TSA.

This early road drag is still in original condition awaiting restoration. Constructed by the Highways Department and made entirely of steel, the sledge-like device was towed behind a tipping truck and served to spread out the load of premixed bitumen. Used between 1933 and 1955, the drag dimensions are 3.57 x 0.80 x 1.4 m. Angled within this piece of equipment is an adjustable height blade.

The road drag or ‘spreader’ prepared the finishing layer to drive upon. After spreading a roller compressed the hotmix to a solid road surface. Road drags were also used on previously made roads that had developed ruts. The drag smoothed hotmix into, and over, the ruts finishing with a ‘proud’ surface. The tipping trucks used to carry the bitumen to the road site were thirty hundred weight (cwt) hand operated tippers.

The first road drag spreaders were made of wood with screws at each side to determine the levels. Steel drags replaced the wood, and although not very efficient, for many years they were the only equipment available for laying and resurfacing roads with bitumen.

Machines known as tamper-finishers that lay and consolidate the bituminous material in one operation replaced the road drag.

Photograph courtesy HTSA Glass Negative Collection.

Photograph of men constructing road at Noarlunga using truck & road drag, 1937.

Photograph courtesy TSA.

Drag spreading metal on the Moorlands to Coomandook road in 1955.

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