What this guide covers
Price too high and you lose the work. Price too low and you lose money on the work you win. The way out of that squeeze isn't a better feel for the market. It's a sheet where every number was measured or worked out, so you know exactly what you're giving up when you sharpen the pencil.
This guide walks through a paving estimate in the order you build one: the takeoff, the material math, crew and equipment, subs, overhead and margin, and the proposal. It links to the longer posts on each kind of job.
Quantity takeoff
Every other number on the sheet is multiplied by the takeoff, so get it right first.
Walk it. Use a wheel, or measure from an aerial view or the plan sheet, then walk the lot anyway. Aerials don't show soft base, and a plan doesn't show what got built differently.
Break it into shapes. Rectangles and triangles, added up. Curves get close enough as short straight runs.
Capture these quantities:
- Gross area in square feet
- Net area after you subtract islands, pads, dumpster enclosures and anything not getting paved
- Linear feet of curb line, edges and butt joints
- Structures: manholes, valve boxes and catch basins to adjust
- Spot repair and base repair areas, measured separately
- Crack footage, if the job includes crack sealing
- Stall count, symbols and arrows for striping
Write down what a tape can't measure. Condition (alligator cracking, ruts, raveling), grade constraints at doors and gutters, truck access, and where to stage. These decide whether the job is an overlay, a mill and fill or a rebuild.
The material formulas
Keep this sheet handy. Each formula is worth working by hand once, so you know when a calculator is wrong.
| What | Formula | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Hot mix, tons | sq ft × depth (in) ÷ 12 × unit weight (lb per cu ft) ÷ 2,000 | 30,000 sq ft at 2 in, 145 lb: 362.5 tons |
| Concrete, cubic yards | sq ft × depth (in) ÷ 12 ÷ 27 | 800 sq ft at 4 in: 9.9 yd |
| Base stone, tons | sq ft × depth (in) ÷ 12 ÷ 27 × tons per cu yd | 800 sq ft at 4 in, 2 tons per yd: about 20 tons |
| Sealcoat, gallons mixed | sq ft ÷ sq ft per gallon × coats | 40,000 sq ft, 75 sq ft per gal, 2 coats: 1,067 gal |
| Tack, gallons of emulsion | sq ft ÷ 9 × residual rate ÷ asphalt fraction | 30,000 sq ft, 0.05 residual, 60 percent asphalt: 278 gal |
| Stall striping, linear feet | (stalls in the row + 1) × line length | 20 stalls, 18 ft lines: 378 ft |
A few notes that keep these honest:
- Unit weight. 145 pounds per cubic foot is a common default for compacted hot mix. The mix design from your plant has the real number. Use it.
- Waste. Every formula gives you the quantity for a perfect surface. Add a waste factor for the real one. Common starting points are 5 to 10 percent for hot mix and concrete, but your own tickets are the better source. See asphalt yield.
- Sealcoat coverage. Spec sheets usually give gallons per square yard. Divide 9 by it to get square feet per gallon.
- Two lifts. Figure binder and surface courses separately. They're different mixes at different prices.
Want the full method for a specific kind of job? Start with asphalt paving, mill and fill versus overlay, sealcoating or concrete flatwork.
Trucking
Trucking is a line you work out, not a percentage you tack on.
Tons divided by your trucks' payload gives loads. Loads times the round trip gives truck hours. At 16 tons a load, a 362.5-ton job is 23 loads. With a plant 40 minutes away and 25 minutes to load and dump, each trip is 105 minutes, so that's about 40 truck hours. A plant 15 minutes away cuts it to about 21.
Count the millings, too. They go out by the truckload, and they take more room loose than they did in the lot.
Crew and equipment
Labor at loaded cost. Take each person's wage and add the employer's share of Social Security and Medicare (7.65 percent), unemployment tax, workers' comp and benefits. Price the crew at that number, not at wages.
Production from your own jobs. How many tons a day your paving crew places, how many square feet an hour your sealcoat crew covers, how many feet of form your concrete crew sets. Nobody else's production rates fit your crews, your equipment and your lots. If you don't have your own yet, start logging them this season.
Equipment at your cost to own and run. Figure a real hourly cost for the paver, rollers, mill, skid steer, sealcoat rig and trucks: payments or depreciation, insurance, repairs, fuel. Use a rental rate only when you're actually renting.
The days that aren't production days. Equipment transport and setup, prep and cleanup, milling if you do your own, base repair, and the drive, on every crew.
Subs and pass-through costs
Milling, striping, trucking and concrete often go to subs. Get a written quote from the sub, and mark it up. You're scheduling them, carrying the risk if they don't show, and often paying them before your customer pays you.
Permits, traffic control and testing are pass-throughs when the job needs them. Either price them with a markup or exclude them in writing. Never leave them unmentioned.
Overhead and margin
Every job carries its share of the shop, the office, the trucks and the insurance. Set that share from last year's books, not from a number somebody told you.
Here's the arithmetic with example numbers. Put your own in.
- Overhead rate. Last year's overhead was $300,000 and direct job costs were $1.5 million. $300,000 ÷ $1,500,000 = 20 cents of overhead for every dollar of direct cost.
- Job cost with overhead. A job with $40,000 of direct cost carries $8,000 of overhead, for $48,000.
- Profit. You want $5,000 of profit on it. The price is $53,000.
- Check the margin. Gross margin is ($53,000 − $40,000) ÷ $53,000 = 24.5 percent. Markup on direct cost is $13,000 ÷ $40,000 = 32.5 percent.
Markup and margin are not the same number. If you want a 24.5 percent margin and add 24.5 percent to cost, you end up with about $49,800 instead of $53,000. That's $3,200 short, about 6 percent of the price, on this job and on every job you price that way.
Set the margin your numbers say you need. Then divide the price by the net square feet and compare it with what you usually get for this kind of work. If it's far off, something's missing.
The proposal
The proposal is the estimate the customer can read. Put these on it:
- Quantities: area, lift thickness, tons, milling depth, stall count
- Mix type, tack, and what happens to the millings
- Unit prices for the unknowns: base repair per square foot, extra mix per ton, structure adjustments each
- Exclusions: unsuitable subgrade, utilities, permits, cars not moved
- Weather and rescheduling terms
Unit prices on the proposal turn the change order into arithmetic when the mill finds soft base. See the change orders guide for the rest.
Close the loop after every job
Add up the plant tickets and the crew hours and compare them with the sheet. If the tickets came in 10 percent heavy and you allowed 5, the waste factor for that kind of job is wrong, and it'll be wrong on every estimate until you change it. Job costing is how the estimate gets better every season instead of repeating last year's mistakes.
Where Pavr fits
Pavr is job management software for paving, sealcoating, striping and concrete contractors. You draw the lot on the satellite view or the GC's PDF plan, start from 131 built-in paving, concrete, sealcoat and striping services, and add your plant prices and crew rates. The estimate shows your cost and margin before you send it.
The customer signs the proposal on their phone from the email. A plant price change after that doesn't touch the proposal you sent. When the job runs, approved hours, material off the daily log, receipts and sub invoices post against the lines you estimated, so the next estimate starts from what the last one actually cost. See how estimating works.
Weighing tools against each other first? Pavr compared with the other tools puts the takeoff and the proposal side by side, with a source and a date on every claim.