I took a ride in JCB’s £200k ‘Pothole Pro’ tackling the nation’s road crisis – I couldn’t believe how fast it fixed them

THE growing pothole menace is costing cash-strapped drivers £1.48billion a year in repairs, but a British construction firm has come to the rescue.

The AA says it has already been on 380,561 pothole callouts in the first six months of 2024 — and it is expected to get worse as the cold weather sets in.

But The Sun this week became the first newspaper to take a ride on the world’s first, revolutionary pothole repairing machine.

Staffordshire-based construction firm JCB has already started exporting its home-grown “Pothole Pro” to Australia and Dubai.

But uptake in the UK has been slow with struggling councils instead opting for cheaper “quick fixes” that do not last.

The shoddy work means replacement tarmac lifts up within weeks, creating an even bigger pothole.

In the meantime, drivers are suffering punctured tyres, lost alloys and accidents caused by dodging the dangerous potholes.

The cost to the economy is £14billion a year, according to the the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).

The pothole crisis has become so bad that tackling them was seen as a vote winner in the recent General Election.

Labour pledged to fix one million potholes a year, but Chancellor Rachel Reeves pulled the cash earlier this month as part of a spending squeeze.

Jake Cousens, head of road policy at The AA: “You don’t have to drive too far to find a pothole on a local road, it’s a state of crisis.”

The CEBR said in a recent blog: “Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that part of the problem seems to be the use of cheap fillers by private contractors to fill potholes which ‘gets ripped out the first time a bus or a heavy lorry drives over it’.

“The private contractors then get paid a second time to fill the pothole their own filler has created.”

JCB claims the repairs to potholes by its three-in-one machine will last for a minimum of five years.

The other big appeal for the Pothole Pro is its speed.

It can prep a pothole for fixing in just eight minutes while roadworkers would typically need a day to break up the road using jackhammers.

In both fixes, it is then up to a worker to cover the prepped square with 100-degree asphalt and smooth it over — although this is the quickest part of the job.

Due to its speed, JCB says the cost of fixing a pothole is reduced from £63 to £30 and one machine can repair 700 potholes a month.

The “cut, crop and clean” process involves using a 600mm planer to dig into the road surface, a 16in rotating cropper to create a square edge, and a sweeper to clear out the debris asphalt ready for it to be refilled.

James Harper at Stoke-on-Trent council says it has been able to do 18 years’ worth of road repairs in just two and a half years.

The Pothole Pro costs around £200,000 to buy although Mr Harper claims it has made its returns “many times over”.

He added: “Fixing a pothole is also back-breaking work for at least a day with men using hammers. This is much more efficient.”

After seeing JCB’s Pothole Pro in action, Business Editor Ashley Armstrong said: “It’s become a depressing nightmare dodging potholes on our roads. I hate holding my breath as the car bumps and thuds over one.

“I can see that the JCB’s Pothole Pro is the way forward to fixing our rubbish roads quickly before they become totally undriveable.”

Ben Rawding, General Manager at JCB, said: “Council budgets are constrained across the board, but turning to innovation drives value for government, residents and the taxpayer”.