The property manager calls about one pothole. You get there and there are fifteen, and three of them go down to dirt. How you price that job decides whether it's a good afternoon or a free one.
Per hole or per square foot
Per hole is easy for the customer to understand. It works when the holes are small and about the same size: a handful of surface potholes on a small lot.
The trouble is that "a pothole" isn't a unit of work. A six-inch divot and a four-by-four base failure are both one pothole to the customer, and they're nowhere near the same job.
Per square foot works for everything bigger or less uniform. Measure each repair, mark it with paint, add them up, and price the area. You can also price per repair with a size included ("up to 4 sq ft") and a rate for each square foot above that.
Whichever you use, write down each repair's location and size on the proposal or a marked-up site photo. When the customer asks why the bill is bigger than "one pothole", the list answers it.
Probe the depth before you price
Depth changes the material more than area does. Before you price, dig or probe the edge of the worst holes:
- Surface only: the base underneath is firm. Patch the depth of the asphalt.
- Base failure: soft, wet or pumping material under the asphalt. That has to come out, and the base rebuilt and compacted, before patching. If you patch over it, the pothole's back next spring.
Photograph what you find and put it in the proposal, including a line that says what depth your price covers and what happens if the failure goes deeper.
Work the material
Tons of hot mix = square feet × (depth in inches ÷ 12) × 145 ÷ 2,000.
For one 4 sq ft repair:
- At 3 inches: 4 × 0.25 ft = 1 cubic foot. 1 × 145 = 145 lb, a little over 0.07 tons.
- At 8 inches: 4 × 0.667 ft = 2.67 cubic feet. 2.67 × 145 = about 385 lb, almost 0.2 tons.
Same hole on the surface, more than two and a half times the mix. Multiply that across fifteen repairs and you've got the difference between a pickup load and a truck from the plant.
On small jobs, material is often not the biggest cost. Equipment transport and setup, saw time, the plate compactor or roller, tack and the plant's small-load charge can outweigh the mix.
Build the price from your own costs
Price a saw-cut patch job from what it costs you:
- Equipment transport and setup: crew travel, trailer, equipment to site. This is the same whether it's one repair or twenty.
- Labor: crew size × hours × burdened rate. Saw-cut, dig out, remove spoils, tack, place in lifts, compact, clean up.
- Material: tons from the math above, plus a small-load charge if your plant has one, plus tack.
- Equipment: saw, compactor or roller, truck.
- Disposal of what you dig out.
- Your margin. Price = cost ÷ (1 − margin). At a 35% margin, $2,000 of cost is $2,000 ÷ 0.65, or $3,077.
Then divide by the total square feet to get your per-square-foot price for that job. Do that on a few jobs and you'll see where your minimum really is.
Saw-cut patch or throw-and-roll
Saw-cut and patch is the permanent repair. Cut square, vertical edges past the damage, remove the failed material, tack the edges and bottom, place hot mix in lifts, and compact each lift.
Throw-and-roll (cold patch tamped into the hole) is an emergency fix. It's what a property manager needs to get a lot open this afternoon. Price it as what it is, and put in writing that it's temporary and needs a permanent repair.
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- Change orders: get the extra work signed before you do it
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