Residential & light commercial paving · Coltonvale · Mossgrove · the audit-first crew · est. 2012
Send us the other quote. We’ll read it out loud.
Fairbid audits any competitor’s asphalt bid — free, line by line — against the arithmetic every mat answers to: depth, lift count, tack, tonnage, mobilization. Then we lay the drive the bid pretended to: 2.5 inches in two compacted lifts over base we would park our own trucks on. Thirteen seasons, and the audit has never once cost a caller a dollar.
The Fairbid card · 2026
New drive, two lifts$4.50–5.80 / sq ft
2.5 in compacted over read base, SS-1h tack between lifts at 0.06 gal / sy, edges hand-tamped
Mill & overlay$3.75 / sq ft
Old surface milled 1.5 in, tack coat, fresh 2-in wearing course
Infrared blend$3.10 / sq ft
Top two inches reheated and blended — no saw joint, no square scar; 150 sq ft minimum
Saw-cut rebuild, full depth$6.30 / sq ft
Failed section squared to sound edges, base rebuilt, hot mix in two lifts
Sealcoat cycle$0.94 / sq ft
Cracks routed and hot-filled first, then two squeegee coats — never a spray
Striping, beaded$0.80 / lin ft
4-in lines at 15 mils wet, glass beads broadcast while the paint is open
The audit is the business model
Why the card is public
A paving bid is arithmetic pretending to be a mystery. Square feet times depth at 145 pounds a cubic foot is tonnage; tonnage times a published rate is a price. Every line on the card above is the same number the last customer paid, and every estimate we write is that card with your measurements on it — so when another crew’s quote arrives on your kitchen table, the two documents can be laid side by side and made to confess.
Their line: “3-inch mat, one pass”
The thickest-sounding number on the page, and the emptiest. One three-inch pass cannot be compacted — a roller reaches about 95% density through an inch and a half of hot mix, so the bottom of that “3-inch mat” stays loose forever and cracks on the schedule physics keeps. It reads like strength and performs like a band-aid with a premium on it.
Our line: 2.5 inches, two lifts
An inch-and-a-half binder and a one-inch wearing course, each rolled behind the screed while it is hot enough to compact honestly, tack coat between them so they bond instead of stack. The honest section is half an inch thinner — and outlasts the padded one by a decade, because the number that matters is density, not theatre.
Their line: mobilization, twice
A flat “site fee” at the top of the bid, and then the per-foot rate quietly carrying a second one inside it — the same trucks paid for twice on the same kitchen table. We find this in roughly one audited bid in three, and it is the single most profitable line item in residential asphalt.
Our line: one mobilization, printed
One line, one number, waived outright on jobs past 300 tons. If the audit of somebody else’s bid finds a duplicate mobilization, that alone usually pays for the phone call — and it is the first thing we highlight, in the colour of the pen this company was named after.
The audit obligates nobody — including us
The audit is free, written on one page, and yours to keep. Shop it back to the crew who wrote the bid, take it to a third outfit, or fold it into a drawer — a Fairbid estimate after an audit is the same card everybody gets, and the audit has ended with us saying “their number is fair, take it” more than once. Thirteen seasons of that is why the phone keeps ringing.
The audit ledger — one line per bid, findings named — is public on the counter at the Mossgrove yard · audit@fairbidasphalt.example
You send the PDF
A photo of the quote page is enough. Photo, fax, screenshot or the napkin version — arithmetic survives all four.
We run the numbers
Square footage against depth at 145 pounds a cubic foot, the tonnage it implies, the rate it multiplies — and then the structural lines: lift count, tack, base spec, warranty language that says nothing.
We read it out loud
One page, line by line, on the phone or at your kitchen table: what is padded, what is phantom, what is genuinely fair. You ask anything; nothing is off the record.
You decide
Lay it with us at card rates, hand the page back to the other crew, or walk away entirely. The audit was never a hook — it is the whole point.
Four moves, one page
How the audit runs
It takes a day and it costs you nothing, because an industry that hides its arithmetic will eventually be outbid by one that publishes it. The founder wrote that sentence on the first ledger, and it is still the only marketing this company has ever paid for.
A padded paving bid is a lie wearing a tonnage number. We started Fairbid because nobody in this valley would say that out loud.
2025 — 2026
Audited, then laid
Six surfaces from the last two seasons, each one preceded by a competitor’s quote on somebody’s kitchen table. The finding is noted under the photograph.
I sent Fairbid a bid I had already half-signed — $11,400 for my drive. The audit found a duplicated mobilization, a “3-inch” section that was specified as one lift, and a tonnage number that did not agree with anyone’s arithmetic, mine included once they showed me the multiplication. The Fairbid card did the same scope for $9,850, two lifts, tack in writing. The other crew got the audit page back with my compliments.
The four regulars
Questions from the kitchen table
If yours is not here, the yard line runs six to five, Monday to Saturday — and the person who answers has read more bids than the estimator who wrote yours.
Is the audit really free? What’s the catch?
Free, and the catch is that we are a paving company with a public rate card — the audit costs us a day of arithmetic and has brought in eleven seasons of work, which is a trade any accountant would take. We do not require the audit before an estimate, we do not charge if you never pave with us, and the page is yours whichever way you go.
What if the other bid is genuinely cheaper?
Then it is genuinely cheaper, and we say so on the page. A lean crew with honest arithmetic beats our card now and then, and an audit that always ended “hire Fairbid” would be a flyer, not a document. Roughly one reading in ten ends with us telling the caller to take the other number — which is, not coincidentally, why the other nine believe us.
I already signed with the other crew. Is it too late?
For the signature, maybe; for the change orders, no. Most padded money is collected after the trucks arrive — “base conditions,” “extra tack,” mobilization nobody quoted. Send the signed bid and every change order that has followed it, and we will read the whole file. Some crews clean up their act the moment a second paving company is named at the kitchen table.
Do you audit commercial and municipal bids too?
Yes — parking lots, HOAs and small municipal sheets, the same arithmetic at any scale, because tons do not care whose logo is on the truck. Public bids we will check for any resident who asks; the tonnage and the unit rates in a public sheet belong to the taxpayers, and the ledger page reads exactly the same with a clerk’s stamp on it.
Audits turned around in one working day · (555) 053-4402 · audit@fairbidasphalt.example
Send the bid, or send the drive
A photo of somebody else’s quote, or just the measurements of the drive itself — both start the same page. The audit is free, the card is public, and whichever way the arithmetic points, you will own a document that says why. audit@fairbidasphalt.example