When GPS Means Business.

By Ian MacKenzie

Here's a look at how a GPS system helps a contractor bid work tighter and complete jobs faster.

More than two years ago, a Global Positioning System (GPS) was just a gleam in the eye of Georgia grading contractor Alan Cawthon. He hadn't bought one, but he was thinking about it.

Then came the day when he had to manually offset some stakes from a road's centerline to one side. His wife watched him start the job, then left and came back when he had finished.

"My wife asked me how long that took me to do," Cawthon recalls. "I told her it took an hour and a half. She said that dozer costs us $450 an hour, and it was sitting idle all that time. So it cost us $675 - nearly the monthly payment on a Global Positioning System (GPS) - to set those stakes manually. That's what opened our eyes to what GPS could do, because we wouldn't need the stakes."

That was more than two years ago. Since then, Alan Cawthon Inc., dba Peek Grading, has fitted two dozers and one motor grader with Leica GradeSmart 3D GPS systems, and he's glad he did - especially in these difficult economic times. …

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