Emery Paving Company

In this part of the country ( NC mountains) many roads are privately maintained. Our community has 26 home/land owners and we maintain the road ourselves. Our road is three-quarters of a mile long and was getting in bad shape with many areas starting to fail. We contacted several paving companies in the area for quotes. In the process of educating ourselves we learned there are many types of road resurfacing besides asphalt. I also sent out emails to paving companies not in our area explaining I was seeking advice and since they did not service our area they had no reason to be bias towards one method. Those that responded all came back with,"Use the chip seal method" because it was far less expensive than asphalt and it was ideal for steep slopes because it offered a rough surface as compared to asphalt. In addition, they all said, "Only let a company that has the specialized chip seal equipment do the job." Of all the quotes Emery was the lowest and they had the specialized chip seal equipment. Turns out they could quote the lowest price because they had the specialized equipment that allowed them to do the job quicker than competitors who would use a manual method. The first day Emery came out and used asphalt to repair the areas failing and to level the road in areas where we had patched a spot in the past. The next time they came out they did the chip seal resurfacing where they lay down a thick layer of sealant then immediately laid down a layer of rock aggregate. The rock aggregate was then rolled into the sealant. A second layer was applied in the same way. The result were excellent at one-third the cost of asphalt. The only thing I had to ding them on was responsiveness. Road resurfacing is dependent on the weather and the job they are working on. We had several cases where they would say they were coming only to find out at the last moment they were delayed due to weather or a job they were doing required more time than they expected. It would of been better to know a little more in advance. I will add this advice, if your area has weather so cold paving companies can not work in some winter months, do it in the spring as soon as weather permits. The paving company will have fewer customers in front of you to cause delays and you will not run the risk of having to wait until the next spring because it got too cold before they could get to you. We just barely made it because a cold spell is coming in a few days which will most likely end the paving season here.