Zachary Crockett
speaker
79 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Zachary Crockett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
For state transportation departments, service signs can bring in millions of dollars in revenue. But most highway signs aren't lucrative for the public entities responsible for them. Making them is an intensive and costly endeavor. There are dozens of companies that make the smaller ones, like stop signs or speed limit signs.
But few manufacturers are capable of producing the enormous green highway guide signs. When a state transportation department needs a new one, the job goes to someone like Renee Roach.
Roach has a big job to go along with that big title.
Most highway signs have a sticker on the back with the dates that it was manufactured and installed. Roach knows exactly how long every sign has been on the highway and when it probably needs to be replaced. A good sign might last anywhere from 12 to 20 years before the natural elements start to degrade it. But sometimes, replacements happen far sooner.
Whenever Roach needs a new highway sign, she turns to a trusted supplier.
In North Carolina, nearly every highway sign in the state comes from the sign plant in the small town of Bunn. That's why we took a trip out there to see the manufacturing process for ourselves.
Is this whole thing we're looking at here one sign?
It's pretty awesome. When we get out on the yard, I'll show you some really big signs. As a general manager who oversees the plant, Lee Blackman is in charge of running day-to-day operations. I talked to him on the factory floor over the sounds of welding torches and miter saws.
The process for making a highway sign begins with a detailed blueprint sent over by Renee Roach at the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
The first step of the fabrication process is selecting the right kind of aluminum for the job.
The workers haul these huge sheets over to the shearing department, where they're cut to size. Sometimes, signs are so big that they have to be split up into as many as 14 different panels. When the contractor gets it out on the job site, they'll put it together like a puzzle. The sheared metal is sanded down to get rid of any blemishes or rough patches.
Then it's coated with green reflective sheeting.
Then comes one of the more technical parts of the job, putting the letters on the sign. For large highway signs, each letter is printed individually and placed by hand according to very strict measurements.
It's not a whole lot of leeway. From start to finish, it can take around 12 hours to finish a single large highway guide sign. Once the sign is done, it's taken out into the storage yard. There, racks upon racks of enormous highway signs are lined up to get transported all over the state of North Carolina.
North Carolina's Department of Transportation pays around $42 per square foot for the sign itself. Depending on the size, that could run anywhere from $1,400 for an exit sign up to $8,500 for a large guide sign. Then there's installation. If the sign is ground-mounted, labor and support beams might run an additional $18,000.
If the sign has to hang over the road, either on a cantilever or a structure that spans the entire highway, that cost could be as high as $200,000. But there's a catch that saves the state a ton of money. The Bunn sign plant is located inside a prison that's staffed by incarcerated individuals. And that allows Renee Roach to get a good deal on signs.
This isn't unique to North Carolina. Most states across America use prison labor to make stuff, not necessarily highway signs, but a variety of products all around us.
Like most working people, Christopher Barnes has a daily routine.
He brushes his teeth, washes his face, and at around 7 in the morning, he makes the short commute to his workplace.
Barnes and his colleagues make highway signs.
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