Pub. 3 2020-2021 Issue 3

23 everything that involves, is a small piece of a bigger puzzle that keeps this country moving. It also makes it possible for people to drive back and forth to their loved ones. 3. Your car will never smell good. Your car will always smell like asphalt if you are near a plant or a job site. Let’s talk a bit about Maxwell Products, Inc. It’s a family company. You are now part of the Maxwell family, and you are very clearly proud of the company you work for and represent. The company was founded in 1975 by Ted and Delwyn Maxwell. They were schoolteachers in Southern Utah before that. Teaching school to asphalt paving is a leap. How did that happen? Ted and Delwyn are insanely intelligent men who grew up on a farm near Glendale, which is so small it still doesn’t have a gas station. They are like two peas in one pod. They joke together, sing together, and they love expanding their minds. The farm taught them how to work hard, and they became teachers because they loved learning new ideas and concepts. Ted taught at an elementary school in Orderville, and Delwyn taught in Ganado, Arizona, on a Navajo Nation reservation. He taught chemistry, math, and physics. He loves all three subjects. Why did they decide to create a pavement maintenance business? Ted and Del were always logging in the summer and sometimes in the winters to make ends meet. That work led to maintenance jobs. In between their other work, they saw an opportunity for growth if they started doing sealcoating and sealcoat manufacturing. Delwyn left teaching and came back to Southern Utah full- time to do more sealcoat work. Ted helped Del after hours and in the summer. He also worked on funding. It was always a pretty good partnership. They worked hand in hand through everything. They had an opportunity to open a seal coat plant in Salt Lake City, so Del moved up from southern Utah. As the plant started to grow, Ted moved to Centerville about a year later. They saw a need for crack seal, and they licensed a formula from Arizona Refining Company for asphalt rubber, which is what crack sealant was back then. Ted and Del thought they could elevate the crack sealant and make a more effective material than asphalt and rubber, so they created some formulations and started tinkering with them. They were contracting part of the time and working on crack sealant the rest of the time. They would mix crack sealant in a kettle and then deliver it. The crack sealant wasn’t even packaged. It became more of a packaged item over time. Why did they decide to go full-time with a pavement maintenance business and move to Salt Lake City? Salt Lake City asked them to start manufacturing crack sealants. continued on page 24