Asphalt Millings

[MG44]

Has anybody ever had, seen, or know anything about Asphalt Millings? I recently purchased another shop about 30 minutes from my current one. It is only a 2 bay (well 3, but the 3rd bay is too small to be useable). It has a moderate parking lot, 53x105ft. It needs refinished, it needs anything put on it in the condition it currently is in.

Right now it is a very degraded asphalt lot. Probably 40+ years old, and not much left to it. I have called around and had 3 or 4 estimates for Concrete, two of the guys being pretty competitive. I called for some asphalt quotes. I've always been under the impression that asphalt was cheaper then concrete in material and labor. I guess I was wrong because I have had asphalt quotes several thousands, up to tens of thousands, higher then concrete, not one even at an equal price to my lowest concrete estimate.

While I was looking for asphalt quotes, I seen a guy on Craigslist put up a post about asphalt millings. No pictures, no prices, just said it was much cheaper then concrete/asphalt and looks great. I called him, spoke to him twice, was suppose to go and see a job he was working on, then he stopped returning my phone calls. I still have yet to see a driveway/parking lot with asphalt millings.

At this point I don't know if the operation is going to be profitable, the building is in an area particularly hit by the recession several years ago. I am going to try and operate a 2nd repair shop out of it, but I don't want to over shoot and invest more into the place then I should.

I would like to hear from past experiences if anybody has seen, parked, or installed an asphalt milling driveway. If the stuff holds up fairly well, looks decent, and doesn't need any special equipment besides a 2 ton roller to install, I am not even opposed to paying my employees some over time to go out on the weekend with me and redo this parking lot ourselves.

Remember this shop is a 2 bay, it is not going to be an autobahn with tons of traffic on it. Just passenger cars and light trucks (F150 size). I would even gravel the lot except with the snow here it makes it tough to plow and the guys may need to use a floor jack & jack stand outside on occasion to change a tire or take a quick look at a vehicle.

 

[2012 LML]

Where do you live? I know here in Florida it's cheap ($100 triaxle) in NY it's like $700.

I live on a millings road (county) and have a millings driveway, except near the house / shop (concrete).

I love it. Compact it best you can initially, rain, heat, traffic = asphalt.

 

[BigGMC]

Works great for driveways. Hard to get in my area, municipalities won't let go of any they produce - recyle it with new and lay it on other roadways.
It's much softer at first but will compact/settle to be quite firm - offeres great drainage too. Particles are generally larger so unlike gravel it won't track into shop as bad.

 

[2012 LML]

Particles are generally larger so unlike gravel it won't track into shop as bad.

This will depend on how coarse / fine it was milled.

I prefer it to be more coarse, while the county here has it milled fine.

 

[Clik]

I used it on my two bay industrial garage. I have ten wheel and tri-axle trucks parking on it daily. It's held up for years now with no pot holes or muddy areas. It's a little looser than asphalt but stiffer than 1/2" gravel. I wouldn't waste my money rolling it. Traffic will do that free. Some seems drier than others and can be dusty if used as an access road, but I imagine it could be sprayed with tar to rejuvinate it.

 

[boiler7904]

As you're finding out, the always rising price of oil has driven asphalt through the roof.

Like someone else said, if a community is milling and re-paving roads the paving contractor usually hauls the millings to the plant for recycling into certain batches of material making them hard to get.

We've re-built miles of roadway on Air Force bases the last couple of years and the resulting pile of millings becomes a challenge. On one base, they use it to resurface the gravel service road that circles the airfield since millings hold up to traffic in wet weather better. We've also used it in place of gravel in building new roads.

Most of the asphalt millings I've dealt with are in the 1" minus size range with the occasional large chunk of material so it grades pretty easily. Another advantage to millings over gravel is that you don't get a lot of dust off of it.

Have you thought about pouring a new apron or pad in front of the overhead doors and then using millings for the rest of the lot?

 

[Chaznsc]

I would even gravel the lot except with the snow here it makes it tough to plow and the guys may need to use a floor jack & jack stand outside on occasion to change a tire or take a quick look at a vehicle.

I wold be very careful in using millings based on this statement. The millings will "stick" together in a very simplistic way, but would be dug up easily running a plow into it.

Asphalts almost always cheaper and it should be. You need to provide your specs and if you have accounted for any remediation of the existing base and subgrade. THAT'S the most important part of paving.

 

[csp]

Do a search on recycled asphalt. Several of us have detailed how we have used it for our driveways. I don't feel like typing it all over again.

 

[CARS]

A friend of mine bought a trailer full (live bottom, semi trailer) load of asphalt millings last fall for his farm yard. It never packed, it made snow removal difficult, etc. He would never do it again.

 

[Heavy Metal Doctor]

IMO, millings are fine for general purpose driveway and parking areas, but no so great if there will be any service work going on there. Concrete is the only thing that will stand up to oil / fuel leaks and not get marred up too much by jack stands and such....so it really depends of what will be happening at the given location......

 

[starquestMM]

Yeah if you are going to be parking and/or working on it, go with concrete. I'd consider untreated asphalt millings as sort of a "super" gravel.


A portion of the costs of asphalt is the mobilization of a paver and rollers to your site. So for a small job, the mobe can be more than the actual materials.

 

[toymn6366]

got 2 loads hauled in last week for 75 bucks a load they where milling on street in front of the feedmill.i'm going to use it as filler

 

[Bricen18]

I covered my driveway with millings about 150ft long. IT is in its third year and holding up great. initialy i had mud and grass and put #3 limestone down then #2 ontop of that and millings on top. I do use a snowblowed on it but havent had much issue with that once it freezes up i dont have to worry about throwing the millings.

The only bad thing i can think of is when it is wet out they tend to track into the cars and garage. That is just a con of not having a solid drive.

I say go for it if the price is right.

 

[Bookworm]

I know a great deal about this subject. First, my bona fides :
I own a small trucking company, and do this type of work regularly. Ten-wheelers and tri-axle, sand/dirt/gravel/asphalt/etc. I've spent more time "under the belt" of a milling machine than I care to remember. For those that care, when they are milling, it's called "lifting the deck".
Some have commented on the "coarseness" of the millings. How coarse the millings are depends on how deep the machine is lifting. A 1" cut will produce "finer" material than a 6" cut. The deeper cut brings up chunks.
The finer material packs MUCH better, using either a roller, or just "wheel-rolling" with a skid-loader.
Around here (central Okie-land) most of the "clean" millings are recycled back into the hot-mix asphalt. They are crushed to a specified grade, and fed right back into the plant as it mixes new asphalt. That's why clean crushed asphalt is so hard to find. You may be able to find millings straight off the belt, but usually only in areas that are too far from the plant to make it economical to truck back.
That being said, the "dirty" millings, and broken asphalt are usually stockpiled and crushed for using as road-base and driveways. "Dirty" asphalt can means millings or broken asphalt with actual dirt mixed in, or just asphalt with foreign material in it - concrete pieces, brick chunks, whatever.
In my experience, the crushed asphalt makes an excellent material for a driveway - IF there is a solid base prior to spreading it. The problem is that the crushed asphalt (or millings) never really harden solid. It remains somewhat flexible, you can see it flex when a heavy truck rolls over it if the base is not solid.
What I recommend to my customers is this : use gravel to make a solid base, then in a few years when the gravel has packed in, come back and put crushed asphalt (or millings, if you can find them) over the gravel. Spread it with a motor-grader if possible (a much better surface), or a skid-loader. Wet it, wheel-roll it, or pack it in with a roller if available. It will last for many years, but you must do it right the first time.
The problem with millings as a surface is that once they are down, there is nothing you can do to re-do the surface. With gravel you can just scrape it up and re-level, but the millings get too hard.

 

[Modifieddriver]

I wanted crushed asphalt here as a base for some concrete work instead of crush and run gravel. Couldn't get any. It's all being recycled for highway paving.

 

[MG44]

Asphalt millings are available here for $15 a ton from what I have been told. Does anybody have any pictures of what THEIR asphalt milling driveways look like?

I am doing the first 20-30 feet by the garage doors with concrete and then doing the millings past that to the road.

 

[06 DIESEL]

As stated above if you do the beginning of the parking area with concrete then use millings you should be OK. A few friends of mine have milling driveways and they work great. Be sure to pack it down well at first and if you wet it and pack it you will have a much harder pack than if you just drive over it. Millings are either available or not, it all depends on what is going on in your area with paving. When they have an abundance of them you can sometimes get them for free if you let the contractor just dump the loads in your driveway and you spread them, but you usually have to take many loads, 10+ for that to be a possibility.