Murl Butler of ISS Nominated for California Chip Seal Association
Life-Time Achievement Award

International Surfacing Systems would like to nominate Murl Butler for a life time achievement award potentially presented from the California Chip Seal Association for his active and extremely successful involvement in pavement maintenance, pavement preservation and the chip seal industry here in California for over 35 years.  Many of Murl’s colleagues refer to him as a pioneer concerning the use of Asphalt-Rubber binder in chip seal applications in California.  More importantly he has been referred to as an honest man with a high degree of integrity concerning the proper maintenance practice and the use of chip seal applications throughout the state. 

Murl Butler
Murl started his career in the construction industry by accepting a position as maintenance foreman working as a carpenter on the bridge crew with Contra Costa County in 1965.  He worked in that position for five years and in 1969 took over the county wide chip seal program as maintenance superintendent.  The County chip seal program had its problems and from the very beginning Murl was interested and sometimes obsessed in understanding all the variables in chip seal construction and improving the operations of the County.  He learned about emulsions, aggregate gradations and application rates.  He studied construction procedures and learned other nuances of chip sealing such as spreader bar height, proper nozzle sizing, rolling procedures; proper ambient, surface and materials temperatures along with proper application rates and overall chip seal techniques. 

This self inflected education led to many positive changes for the chip seal program in Contra Costa County.  Under Murl’s direction, the program improved with higher production and better quality in becoming the standard procedure for the County crew.  For nearly fifteen years Murl would strive on a continuous basis to not only improve how the County would maintain it’s own roads,  but he worked with many cities throughout the County to chip seal their roads as well.  In the mid-1970’s Murl was introduced to a new chip seal binder called asphalt-rubber and the County tried a test section which was questionable as far as being considered a success in Murl’s eyes.  However, Murl saw the benefit of this “new” binder and how resistant it was to reflective cracking, making the decision to continue using this material.  Through his insistence concerning quality workmanship and innovation, whether conventional or asphalt-rubber chip seal, his guidance allowed the road maintenance program in Contra Costa County as well as other agencies to be successful.

Murl left Contra Costa County in the late 1970’s and went to work for Sahuaro Petroleum and Asphalt Co. in Phoenix Arizona, the very company that had introduced asphalt-rubber to him years before.  Murl was responsible for marketing the Pacific Coast States concerning asphalt-rubber and soon got involved with another new concept called “crack sealing”.  Due to his reputation when he was with Contra Costa County, Murl was very successful at guiding many state, county and city agencies in the proper use of maintenance materials such as crack sealing and also the proper use of chip seals.  During these years Murl continued to work with technicians, engineers and field personnel to further improve materials quality, construction techniques and equipment function.

Murl left Sahuaro Petroleum in the early 1980’s and returned to Contra Costa County taking back the supervision of the chip seal program.  Murl ended up leaving the County once again and went to work for a company called Daycor, which was a crack sealing company.  Murl worked as a superintendent for Daycor before taking a full time position with International Surfacing Inc. (ISI), which was the predecessor company of International Surfacing Systems who he works with today. 

Murl has been a dominant force in the roadway maintenance industry here in California for over 35 years.  We do not believe that there is anyone in the industry today, when hearing the name Murl Butler, who could say anything negative about this man.  He truly is an example we all should follow and learn from.  “His work in Contra Costa County still stands the test of time as there are several streets that are still crack free 20 years later.”  Tom Borman – City of Fairfield.

“What I appreciate about his involvement with the City of Fairfield has been his expert advice prior to deciding what streets we should surface.  He spends a day with us reviewing the streets we have chosen and lets us know if they meet the criteria.  His honesty is greatly appreciated during this time because he could just say “yea just cover them all”.  That’s not Murl, he will tell us if we should pull streets from the list without thinking of profit.  I think what it all boils down to is Murl’s down home integrity and straight forwardness.  These are attributes that cannot be learned in a seminar someplace. If they could he would be a professor emeritus.”  Tom Borman – City of Fairfield.

What Tom has said about Murl we emulate to the highest degree as do many others in the chip seal industry here in California.  Murl Butler deserves this honor from the California Chip Seal Association and it would be a travesty to ignore him or his accomplishments for another year.

Respectively Submitted – From the Employees of International Surfacing Systems and the many true friends Murl has in this industry and throughout California.