The business’s primary function is the milling of tar and concrete roads for rehabilitation.  Where roads have a safety problem, RMS have been contracted to cut rumble strips.

RMS operates on a national basis and has successfully completed cross-border contracts in Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Namibia, Lesotho amongst others.

The Founding Member of the business, Cecil Aling, has 45 years experience in the Motor and construction industry. 

Road Milling and Sweeping cc. is the largest privately owned operator of milling machines in South Africa.

For further information on our business, please use the links to navigate through our website or contact us.

From humble beginnings back in 1999 with a single Wirtgen 1000C milling machine, Road Milling and Sweeping (RMS) today owns a strong 21-unit fleet of milling machines, making it the single biggest privately-owned operator of such specialised gear in South Africa. Founded by Cecil Aling and a business partner at the time, today the family-owned business is being steered by two of Cecil and Glynn Aling’s three daughters, Leigh Cameron and Lesley Kafka, who share their father’s passion for anything mechanical, but with a premium taste, of course. Over the years, RMS has supported the Wirtgen brand for its milling equipment needs purely driven by the understanding that though premium calls for premium capital outlay, the returns, in the long run, are massive.

Road Milling’s core business is the rental of milling machines for rehabilitation of asphalt and concrete roads. The company operates on a national basis and has recently successfully completed cross-border contracts. “We work all over South Africa in terms of the milling work we do. In the past year, we have done quite a lot of cross border work,” says Lesley Kafka, general manager of RMS. “We still have ongoing work in Lesotho that will pick up in 2017. We have also worked in Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland and Malawi.”

Kafka foresees increased cross-border work moving forward as most of the South African civil contractors spread their wings into the rest of Africa for greener pastures. This is considering that most of the cross-border contracts RMS has are with local South African companies doing work outside the country. According to Kafka, 98% of the company’s cross-border work is through the South African contracting fraternity working elsewhere in Africa.

Sticking to core business

Over the years, RMS has stuck to its core niche business of renting out milling machines, but with a few other value adds such as lowbed trucking services, road sweeping, tippers and water carts. The company now owns its own three lowbed trucks used mostly for transporting its rented milling machines to sites, but these can be outsourced to any other customers in need of lowbed trucking. However, Kafka says sticking to the milling business only is a difficult decision from a strategic point of view. “We ask ourselves whether we need to stick to our niche or diversify the business,” says Kafka.

“Diversification has got its own pros and cons. Sometimes you become too thinly spread. Ours is a capital intensive business, so to diversify you need to invest huge amounts of capital into equipment. Diversifying is also a bit challenging in the sense that all of our people are focused on milling; our operators know how to mill and are not versed with any other work,” reasons Kafka.

But, Leigh Cameron, financial manager at RMS, believes that if ever the decision to expand the product portfolio is made, the immediate possible and closest option would be recyclers. She believes that recycling is aligned to what the company does and will allow it to continue dealing with the very same customer base. RMS reports increased demand for its milling machines in the past 12-18 months.

“We believe we had a fantastic year in 2016 in terms of being able to keep our machines on hire,” says Kafka. Demand is mostly driven by smaller civil engineering contractors. This is in direct contrast to some five years ago where the company would mostly deal with the bigger civil contractors.

Understandably so, this trend is because of the way civil projects are being packaged in South Africa at this stage. Projects are being packaged into smaller lots to allow smaller and upcoming contractors to have a share of the government infrastructure spend. Most of these smaller contractors lack the financial muscle to invest in their own specialised gear such as milling machines, hence the increased demand for RMS’s services.

Success drivers

For a rental business of this nature, machine uptime is a key success driver. For that reason, RMS, from its inception, has always purchased Wirtgen milling machines only. All its 21 milling machines are Wirtgen machines. Kafka explains the reasons behind the loyalty to the brand.

“We started out with a Wirtgen and created a strong bond at the time,” she says, adding that the relationship has been further strengthened over the years.

RMS has also built a strong technical competence on Wirtgen machines with its own mechanical workshop equipped with strong technical capability to service these machines in-house. Led by Errol Edwards, workshop manager at RMS, the technical knowhow on Wirtgen machines goes beyond service and maintenance to include complete rebuilds of the machines in-house.

Another reason for sticking to Wirtgen is the fact that these German-made milling machines have a good reputation among RMS’s customer base. “Wirtgen machines are popular products among our customers, in terms of their quality of work and productivity,” says Kafka.

The quality of the build and durability is another key driver for sticking it out with this range of machines. This is reinforced by the fact that the first Wirtgen 1000C which kicked off the business back in 1999 is still in operation today, and works beyond expectations.

Meanwhile, a good product is as good as its service, and aftermarket support from Wirtgen South Africa has kept this relationship intact over the years. Waylon Kukard, Wirtgen sales manager, who has become more than just a business partner, is always at hand to respond to RMS’s needs, be it technical queries, parts issues or even advice, especially at a time when the company is grappling with the idea of diversifying its product range. “We have become friends along the way. We work closely together on RMS’s plans for the future,” says Kukard.

Strong maintenance regime

Prior to the purchase of its new machine in July 2016, the previous machine RMS bought was back in 2013. According to Cameron, that speaks volumes about the quality of the build of the machines, but more importantly the strict service and maintenance regime. “Due to our strong focus on maintenance, even our first machine is still running perfectly beyond our customers’ expectations,” she says. The longevity of this gear is also buoyed by the fact that these machines are rented out with an operator. Every operator sticks to their own machine, which, over the years, becomes their daily office.

“Our operators are very territorial about their machines and they look after them,” says Kafka.

A strict service and maintenance regime is followed, according to Edwards. Services, including oils, hubs, gear boxes and engine oil, are done at every 250-hour intervals. These intervals are maintained even when machines are out on sites.

These services are undertaken on sites 95% of the time. Major services, such as drums and hydraulics, are done once a year, especially during the December downtime period when most machines return to the workshop.

Wirtgen undertakes services for all machines under warranty. All services are then done in-house when machines are off warranty. Continuous training of the 25 operators is also a key focus for the company, says Brian Manganyi, operations manager at RMS. It is this thorough training regime that has seen Manganyi himself rising through the ranks over the years when he started as a security guard, before he became a foreman, a supervisor and currently the operations manager.

Looking ahead, Kafka and Cameron are convinced that the business will continue on a good course in 2017. “Our vision is to continually strive for excellence to further build our reputation. We always go an extra mile for our customers, delivering more than they expect.” This goes beyond the equipment to the people, constantly focusing on the people who make it happen on the ground. “Being a smaller, family-owned business, allows you to have that desire to always go out of your way for customer service.”

Source Capital Equipment, Jan 2017

The demolition of a bridge on the A5 at Darmstädter Kreuz motorway junction just a few kilometres south of the Frankfurter Kreuz junction had become unavoidable. The busy A5 motorway had to be blocked to this end, providing the ideal opportunity to simultaneously carry out the urgently needed rehabilitation of the Frankfurt motorway junction. Indeed, the majority of traffic had already been re-routed, so the risk of congestion was low.

The perfect time for carrying out the work was between 3 and 6 October 2013. This year, German Unity Day – celebrated on 3 October – fell on a Thursday, and a long weekend with little traffic was expected. Consequently, Hessen Mobil planned the A5 rehabilitation work for this period. This meant that everything had to be finished within 57 hours from the time of blocking traffic to re-opening the completely rehabilitated sections, i.e. in 2 days and 3 nights.

One project – three job sites

The roadway was repaired in both directions at a total of six locations, equating to a surface area of roughly 18,200 m². The project allowed no margin for errors, as “blocking this stretch of the A5 in both directions a second time isn’t on the cards,” said Burkhard Vieth, President of Hessen Mobil. The contingent of personnel and equipment assigned to the €1.6 million project was correspondingly high: about 50 personnel were actively involved directly on the job site. Additionally, 63 lorries shuttled back and forth at peak times during the rehabilitation work. “That was certainly something special for us,” reported Senior Site Manager Wolfgang Lustig of STRABAG AG.

Nighttime operation for twelve milling machines

The project planners allowed traffic to continue using the motorway on the national holiday on the public holiday, but the machines were ready to go: immediately after the motorway was blocked at 10 pm, nine large milling machines and three compact milling machines started ploughing through the roadway surface. Depending on the condition, they only milled away surface and binder courses in some places, while in others they removed the entire asphalt pavement and in two sub-sections an additional 32 cm of hydraulically bound base course. Those areas where the hydraulically bound base course and overlaying asphalt layers had to be renewed were particularly critical in terms of scheduling. There was definitely tension in the air: “We had to be able to commence stabilization of the new hydraulically bound base course at first light,” said Siena Schneider, in charge of three of the six job sites.

Wirtgen milling machines a safe bet

Jörg Freitag, Regional Director at milling service provider SAT, a company in the STRABAG Group, coordinated the operations of the cold milling machines: “We worked with Wirtgen milling machines exclusively. The high-performance large milling machines allowed us to keep exactly to the required milling depths and the tight timeframe.” The asphalt was removed layer-by-layer in order to separate the valuable milled material and permit optimum recycling later. The planners had already provided for sufficient lorry capacity, so the high-performance machines were able to really flex their mechanical muscles and achieved milling rates in excess of 200 t/h per machine. It was essential to the overall process that the milling work progressed quickly. A technician was on site just to make certain. “However, our workshop foreman didn’t have to intervene – everything ran smoothly once again,” summarized Jörg Freitag, as the last milling machines left the job site after 14 hours.

Logistics for advanced users: Three asphalt layers and five types of mix

The crews readied the first pavers and rollers while it was still dark so that they could commence the asphalt paving work on the completely milled sections come daybreak. Here, too, STRABAG deployed machines from the Wirtgen Group. Hamm compactors and rubber-wheeled rollers were used to compact the rehabilitated hydraulically bound base course, while Vögele pavers and Hamm rollers handled the lion’s share of the asphalt paving work.

Coordinating the placement of five different types of mix from five mixing plants within just 36 hours was a huge logistical challenge. A total of 10,000 t had to be delivered to the right job site, supplying the right asphalt mix at the right time with as many as 30 lorries. Yet everything went without a hitch thanks to meticulous planning, clearly assigned responsibilities and the use of four Vögele SUPER 1900-2 pavers. And the results of the work were also impressive: “The Vögele pavers produce a top pavement quality, especially with large pave widths like on the A5, where the pave widths extended to 7.80 m. The screeds also achieve a high degree of uniform pre-compaction across the entire width,” said Technical Division Manager Georg Müller when describing the advantages of his road pavers.

Hamm rollers lead the field

The GRW 280 rubber-wheeled rollers from Hamm also played a key role, providing the initial compaction directly behind the pavers. These were followed by various tandem rollers, including all-wheel-drive machines from the DV series and articulated machines from the HD series with different operating weights. The technology of the Hamm machines impressed STRABAG with features such as smooth automatic reversing, which allows high compaction quality without bumps or deformations. From an operator perspective, the compaction specialists of the Wirtgen Group deserve particular praise for the excellent view of the surroundings and the comfortable operator’s platforms in all machine series.

Qualified personnel means efficient execution

In addition to the quality of the machines, good training on the part of the operating crews is also a key factor for the success of a project. “To ensure our teams can deliver quality work, we provide regular training courses for machine operators and paving foremen. We value the good training programme offered by the subsidiaries and headquarters of the Wirtgen Group,” commented Mr. Müller. In Wirtgen Group training courses, professional instructors impart a wealth of expertise on machines and asphalt paving and removal, from settings and operation, all the way to maintenance and the minor troubleshooting. This has a positive impact on the performance, service life and availability of the machines.

On schedule in spite of rainfall

All asphalt layers had been laid down by 6 pm on Saturday, despite heavy rainfall the night before having seriously delayed some of the work – a potential crisis with such a tight schedule. Still, all’s well that ends well! Once the new road surface had cooled sufficiently by 6 am on Sunday, Hessen Mobil gave the order to re-open the rehabilitated stretch to traffic after just 57 hours. And since then, the traffic volume has once again reached 135,000 vehicles per day.

The Wirtgen Group – A reliable partner on the African market

Offering pioneering solutions, the Wirtgen Group has been operating on the African market in the fields of road construction and mining for many years now. With its well-developed service network, the local Wirtgen Group sales and service company, Wirtgen South Africa, not only provides innovative machines but also guarantees short routes to local contacts and fast, reliable response times – for instance, when providing technical support right on the job site or workshop services. The ingenious logistics concept ensures the constant availability of original spare parts. What’s more, Wirtgen Group experts can support customers at any time with on-site applications advice tailored to their needs. The Group is hence a reliable partner to its customers on the African continent, too – on job sites, in mines or in quarries.