Crafco
Written by: Mark Manning
From its humble beginnings in 1976, Crafco was a small growing company with a few great products, lots of ideas and not enough capital to grow the business. In the late 1980’s Ergon Asphalt and Emulsions started selling Crafco asphalt from Vicksburg while Ergon’s Lube Oil Division began selling Crafco process oils after the second Crafco sealant plant opened in Halls, Tennessee. With this first relationship as a customer, the management of Crafco, as well as Baxter Burns, Gene Arnold and Bill Lampton of Ergon, could see that Crafco, Inc., would fit well into Ergon’s future. The two companies spent a few years getting to know each other better; and, then in March of 1991 Ergon, Inc. purchased a majority ownership of Crafco. After the acquisition, the direction from Ergon was simple: keep growing, make a profit and let us know if we can be of any help. Crafco had a number of suitors over the years, but all of these suitors wanted to merge the company into another company, thereby eliminating the Crafco name. They also wanted to move our business operations to another location, which would have caused the company to lose some of its key people. Since the purchase of the company by Ergon, Crafco has become the industry’s leader in packaged pavement preservation products and has grown the business over 500%.
Crafco was the first company to introduce to federal, state and local government agencies in the United States and Canada, the concept of random crack sealing in asphalt pavements as a method of extending pavement life. Crafco took a product that was invented to chip seal an entire pavement surface (asphalt rubber chip seal) and packaged it in a box to seal cracks in the same pavement. This product contained 20 to 25% recycled tires, and Crafco became an early promoter of recycling car tires back into useful purposes. This product was marketed with a melter/applicator designed to handle these new sealants and a pavement router to prepare the pavement for sealing. The “Crafco System” was used to promote the need for pavement preservation and as a low cost method of doing it. Crafco became the “Pavement Preservation People” before pavement preservation was popular.
As the industry has grown, Crafco has also expanded from a single 2000 square foot manufacturing facility in Arizona to eight manufacturing facilities throughout the United States, one in the Czech Republic, and a soon-to-be-opened location in China. Crafco also formed a new company in 2008 called Paving Maintenance Supply, Inc., with eight strategic locations across the United States that sell Crafco brand products, as well as other related construction supply products on a local basis. With the addition of Paving Maintenance Supply, Inc., into the Crafco family, there are currently over 275 employees spanning the globe between the two companies. The most recent growth of Crafco just took place in December of last year with the purchase of the assets of its largest sealant competitor, Deery American, resulting in the addition of the Deery Brand sealant line and two additional manufacturing facilities.
Crafco currently provides over 100 different pavement preservation products and a large variety of quality application equipment. Crack sealants are available in several types, so there is a sealant for any climate and pavement condition that the end user might encounter. Crafco also offers a wide variety of concrete joint sealants, including one of the highest quality highway silicone products available. When standard sealants will not work, Crafco has developed a line of pavement mastics that include TechCrete for concrete repair and PolyPatch and Mastic 1 for asphalt repair. These products are all designed to fill and repair spalls and other pavement defects that are too large for crack sealing. They are also widely used by airports and various other agencies. Another option for severely damaged pavements, such as alligator cracking and potholes, is the spray injection patching process. The Crafco Magnum Spray Injection Patcher is currently used around the world, including by our servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Crafco’s goal is to continue its market leadership in a growing market by supplying the highest quality and most innovative products in the pavement preservation industry.
