Workers who fill potholes in New Jersey are a tough breed. Sweating in the sun over boiling hot patch in what is known as pothole season. Bending and shoveling, sweeping and tamping — using enough asphalt each year to pave 10 football fields. Then, there is having to listen to the pothole jokes. That pothole was so deep, it could have swallowed a Volkswagen.

Nonetheless, Bill Carter, a 33-year New Jersey Department of Transportation employee who last year was appointed assistant commissioner of operations, said the state takes pothole complaints seriously.

Newly released statistics seem to back him up. For the fiscal year that ended June 30, the state filled 143,650 potholes at a cost of about $2 million, up from the 135,000 potholes filled for $1.7 million during the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2009.

An average year is between 130,000 and 140,000 potholes.

Given the fierceness of the winter, which included three major February snowstorms and the vexing weather pattern of thaw-freeze-thaw-freeze, Carter was relieved the number of potholes wasn’t greater.

“After the winter we had, 150,000 to 200,000 wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility,” he said.

The state has 450 workers who fill potholes among other duties, such as clearing roads of dead deer, picking up trash and tending to graffiti. Read more in Star Ledger.