Local crews take the wheel

Aug. 6, 2026

By Tila Grant

DALLAS — When it comes to getting the job done, TxDOT maintenance crews in Dallas are no longer relying on contractors to do what they can handle themselves.

Over the past several years, crews in the Dallas area have steadily expanded the scope of work they perform in-house. From concrete repairs and bridge joint maintenance to full seal coat operations on entire roadways, TxDOT employees are building and expanding their skills.

This is helping to deliver results that benefit drivers and the TxDOT workforce.

Denton County Maintenance Director Wayne Powell says the expansion has been deliberate and meaningful.

“We’ve expanded some of what we have done in the last five years,” he said. “The crews are learning more. They’re getting some more skills under their belts.”

Crew Chief Kade Erwin points to a wide range of tasks crews have taken on, including concrete repairs, washout repairs under bridges, sidewalk panel replacement, and bridge joint cleaning and repair.

“We do a lot of the repairs, concrete spalls, riprap repair, and washout repair,” Erwin said. “We’ve always done washout repairs, but now we’re doing larger ones under bridges. We’re starting to jack up sidewalks, cut them out, and repour sections and panels. And seal coat, that’s a big thing we’ve started doing in the past couple of years.”

One of the most notable milestones has been TxDOT’s move toward performing complete seal coat operations in-house. Previously, crews handled patching work. Full roadway treatment, including operating chip spreaders, ordering oils, and staging material, has been new territory for the teams on the ground.

In the beginning, the crews were deliberate in how they took on seal coat operations. They selected a low-traffic road scheduled for treatment and used it as a training ground, doing practice runs to determine the right rock and oil rates. Then, they were able to tackle full operations.

Crews then completed around five miles of seal coat roadway in a single season, something the TxDOT Dallas District had never done before.

“The Dallas District has never done a complete roadway like that.” Erwin said. “We had one or two guys who had been on a chip spreader before, but with Wayne being out there, we just started working on it, testing it, and figured it out. It worked out really well for us.”

The same hands-on learning approach carried over to a paving project on FM 1385, where crews worked on a different piece of equipment for the first time..

“Our drivers had never hooked up to a laydown machine, and that was a couple of miles of road work as well. It was kind of the same thing —learn as you go,” Erwin said.

For newer employees, these large-scale, in-house projects have become among the most rewarding experiences on the job.

“They like learning something new,” Erwin said. “The big projects are nice, and the new guys are getting a lot of seat time driving and loading trucks, doing stuff they don’t normally get to do. It’s nice to be able to learn, get out there, try new jobs and it’s rewarding whenever you do get it figured out.”

These growing in-house capabilities not only stretch resources further but also directly invest in the long-term development of TxDOT’s workforce. It helps to build a team that’s more skilled, more versatile, and more prepared for whatever awaits them down the road.