Maple Trace Technology · roadside monitoring

Every truck leaves a signature in the road.

MapleTrace MT-16 sits at the side of the road and records how the pavement and the ground beneath it respond: to every heavy vehicle, every hot afternoon and every spring thaw. The data reaches you each morning, without a site visit.

See where it works Join the pilot program

MT-16 roadside logger, front view with sixteen sensor ports and antennas.

06:12:41 · loaded truck, outer wheel path illustrative record

two axles, eight-tenths of a secondµε

Why measure

Roads are designed on paper. They live in the weather.

Design models assume loads and seasons. Real trucks, real frost and real heat are different every year. Measured data turns guesses about a road into decisions.

When can spring load limits come off?

Lifting too early damages a thawing road. Lifting too late holds up local freight for weeks.

Is the new pavement doing what we paid for?

A new mix or a thinner design only proves itself under traffic, over several seasons.

What is the ground really carrying?

Under embankments, culverts and approach slabs, pressure in the soil decides whether settlement starts.

Where it works · example scenarios

Four places an MT‑16 earns its keep

Each scenario uses the same cabinet. What changes is the set of probes you plug in.

Rural truck route · late winter

Lift spring load limits on data, not on the calendar

Each spring the ground thaws from the top down. For a few weeks the base sits wet on frozen soil and the road is at its weakest, so heavy loads are restricted. Most agencies pick the dates from experience.

An MT-16 with a temperature string and strain probes shows the thaw front moving down and the pavement stiffening again, day by day.

The outcomeRestrictions end when the road is ready: not a week too early, not a week too late.

temperature by depthpavement strainair temperature

Test sections · two to five years

Compare pavement designs side by side

A recycled-asphalt mix, a thinner overlay, a new concrete joint: the only real test is traffic and seasons. Build two lanes, put identical probes in each, and let the same trucks load both.

Because every port on the MT-16 is sampled on the same clock, a truck crossing both lanes gives a direct, axle-by-axle comparison.

The outcomeEvidence for the next specification, from your own climate and your own trucks.

strain per axlelayer temperaturelong-term trend

Know what the trucks are doing to the road

Fatigue cracking starts deep in the pavement, years before it shows on the surface. It is driven by the heaviest axles, and by how many of them come through on hot days.

A roadside sensor wakes the MT-16 as each heavy vehicle approaches and records the full pass at high speed. Over a season you get the real load picture of that road.

The outcomeMaintenance planned from measured damage, and early warning when loads change.

event capturestrain & pressurevehicle counts

Embankment or culvert · during construction

Watch the ground take the load as the fill goes up

Soft ground under a new embankment, or the backfill around a culvert, can move if load arrives faster than the soil can take it. Pressure cells at the base show how load is building.

The MT-16 logs them through the build and sends the numbers to the site engineer every day, even when nobody is on site.

The outcomeFill placed at a pace the ground can handle, with a record to show for it.

earth pressuredaily reportunattended

A day on site

Twenty-four hours beside a truck route

What one MT-16 sees and does on an ordinary spring day.