History Of Road Rollers

Road rollers are very important machines in the construction industry, as they can compact soil, gravel, concrete, asphalt and any other surface. Generally all road rollers are consisted of a roller body and one metal drum at least. There is not only a single drum roller, but depending on the application, the road rollers might be twin drum roller (or also called double drum roller compactor) or with three drums.

Like any other construction tool and equipment, the road roller is a witness of many inventions in its history. The very first road rollers were drawn by horse and there were no such on sale, just for loan. At the beginning, the road roller was an agricultural tool used to flatten land and break up large clumps of soil. The land flattening was needed to make subsequent weed control and make the harvesting much easier, while the rolling helps in reducing the moisture loss from cultivated soil. At these distant times, without developed mechanization and trucks, the road roller was driven not by an engine, but by a group of animals, usually horses. But when it came to the 19^th century, the road roller find its use in building roads compacting asphalts.

The disadvantage of road rollers driven by horses was that the animals' capacity was limited and they were hard to control. So, in mid 1800s, the self-powered vehicles have replaced the animals' power, known as steam rollers. Most steam rollers are very similar to traction engines, because many traction engine manufacturers produced rollers based on their existing designs. The main difference between these two vehicle is that on the road roller the main roll replaced the front wheels and axle, in order to be able to fit to a traction engine. Since carrying weight became larger and easier to control with the steam rollers, their popularity was huge and world-wide, as some road companies in the United Kingdom kept them in service until the early 70s.

But the fast improving technology has affected the road rollers in the 20^th century and replaced the steam with gasoline, diesel and kerosene engine. The first internal-combustion powered road rollers were similar to the steam rollers, because they used very similar mechanisms to transmit the power from the engine to the wheels. Many companies did not like them from the beginning, mainly because their engines were very difficult to start (especially the kerosene powered engines). As a consequence, today all road rollers are powered by diesel engines. Today's road rollers have been improved a lot and are much more efficient.

Nowadays, there are many types of rollers available on the market: padfoot roller, smooth drum roller, static roller and many other types. Depending on the use and need, you can choose various hand-operated and powered rollers.