Double Duty Fusion Technicians Play Piggyback

Eureka, UT - Brian Shields squints his eyes and stares into the wavy heat-blurred mirage floating over the twin polyethylene pipelines stretching into the Utah desert. A pair of McElroy fusion machines is spitting out 80 feet of new pipeline every 15 minutes while a single fusion technician slowly paces between them like an expecting father. Shields slides his hardhat off to expose his shaved head to the August sun and says, "In a total of 12 days, we'll be pumping water through a new 22,000 foot HDPE pipeline."

The process of running more than one fusion machine at the same time is called piggybacking. Polyethylene pipeline contractors across the country are embracing the technique to install pipelines at a rate never imagined before.