Asphalt is priced by the square foot on the estimate and paid for by the ton at the plant, and the gap between those two numbers is your margin. Here is how paving crews put a driveway or a lot on paper, a worked estimate you can copy, a calculator that turns square feet and depth into tons at your rates, and the app that writes the estimate from a walk of the site.
Paving has more moving parts than most trades: the base, the depth, the plant price that changes with oil, the trucking, the equipment hours, and the day the weather takes away. An estimate that quotes one square-foot number for everything is betting the whole margin on the base being sound and the plant price holding. When the base fails or the plant goes up, the crew eats it.
The fix is to price what you can measure (square feet and depth, which become tons), price what you have to bring (base rock, equipment, trucking), and put an allowance on what you cannot see until you cut (soft spots, undercut, extra base). Then the customer sees a number with reasons, and the number holds.
Ten lines, in the order the customer will read them.
A real-shaped job priced line by line. The rates are examples in the ranges paving crews commonly quote around the country. Your plant price, your equipment, and your market set the real ones.
| Line item | Qty | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remove existing broken asphalt driveway, 1,200 sq ft, haul and disposeTwo loads to the recycler. | 1,200 sq ft | $1.50 | $1,800 |
| Grade and compact subgrade, install 6 inches compacted crusher run baseAbout 32 tons of stone. | 32 tons | $38 | $1,216 |
| Hot mix asphalt, 3 inches compacted, 1,200 sq ftAbout 22 tons at 3 inches, installed. | 22 tons | $165 | $3,630 |
| Equipment and mobilization: paver, roller, skid steerOne day, all machines. | 1 | $650 | $650 |
| Trucking, plant to siteThree round trips. | 3 | $140 | $420 |
| Tie-in at the street apron and the garage slab, hand workTwo transitions, 40 ft total. | 40 ft | $6 | $240 |
| Undercut allowance for soft subgrade, billed only if needed10 cubic yards allowed, with photos. | 10 cu yd | $45 | $450 |
| Estimate total | $8,406 | ||
| Deposit at signing (30%) | $2,521.80 | ||
That is $8,406 with a $2,522 deposit at signing. The tons are on the paper, the base is its own line, and the soft spot you might find is already priced. If the plant goes up next month, the terms say what happens.
Put in the area and your rates. Tons are figured at about 0.0057 tons per square foot per inch of compacted depth (roughly 145 lb per cubic foot); adjust the tons line if your mix runs different.
Example rates only. Change every number to what you charge. Put these rates in SayEstimate and the app prices the next one from a spoken walkthrough.
Everything below is included. No modules, no add-on pricing, no sales calls.
"Tear out 1,200 feet of old drive, 6 inches of base, 3 inches of hot mix, tie into the street, undercut allowance." The AI drafts the lines in your rates. About 60 seconds, start to send.
Your price book holds the per-ton installed rate and the per-foot lines; the estimate shows both so the customer sees the real quantity.
The cracked drive, the drainage, the access. Documented before the first truck rolls.
The customer opens a clean link, signs, and pays the deposit by card or bank. You are emailed the moment it happens.
Found the soft spot? Add the line with the photo; they approve it on their phone before you dig.
One tap from estimate to invoice. Cash and check marked paid with how they paid. Card and bank settle to your own account with 0% markup.
Written by Terry "Hoss" Tenison runs an insulation business in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and built SayEstimate because the estimating software out there was made for companies with an office staff. The pricing structure on this page is how paving crews put a job on paper; the example rates are illustrations, and your plant and your market set the real ones. More about Hoss →
Run the numbers on any job with the job price calculator, work out your real crew hourly rate, read how much deposit to collect, or grab the free estimate template. Not paving? Concrete · Excavation · Pressure washing · all 38 trades.
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