Commercial & municipal paving · Calder Mill · cored before quoted since 2011

Every mat we lay arrives with its own paper trail.

Truegrade paves parking lots, streets and freight yards on a written spec: base cored before it is priced, two compacted lifts, densities gauge-checked every 500 square yards, and a closeout binder with the tickets, the core log and the striping plan inside. Asphalt with a bibliography.

Services & rates

The bid sheet

Bid-line rates for the Calder Mill belt and the townships around it. The number you sign is the number the closeout reconciles against — core findings, weather waits and plant shortfalls are handled inside the price, not after it.

Lot reconstruction, full depth$2.85–3.40 / sq ft

Failed section removed, aggregate base re-compacted, 4-in two-lift section

Mill & overlay, in place$2.45 / sq ft

2-in mill, leveling course, 2-in wearing course; 0.06 gal / sy tack between

Streets & collectors$128–146 / t

Bid per ton in place — 31% RAP mix, curb and gutter protection, sweeping

Infrared repair programfrom $3.05 / sq ft

Annual or seasonal contract, defects reheated and blended before they crack through

Striping & signage package$0.74 / lin ft

Layout chased to code, 4-in lines at 15 mils, beads, ADA stalls and signage

Night & weekend cutoverquoted flat

Traffic control, flaggers and plant coordination so your Monday opens on time

Why the binder matters

We core before we quote

A pavement number written from the surface is a guess wearing a tie. Truegrade pulls cores on every lot over five thousand square feet — four inches of pavement over good base and four inches over a failing one are different jobs wearing the same asphalt — and the core log goes in the binder you keep. It is why our change orders run to zero in a normal season.

The closeout binder, per lot

Plant tickets matched to the takeoff, density readings every 500 square yards, the core log, the striping as-built and the warranty registration — bound, handed over, and the same document our warranty reads from. If it is not in the binder, we did not do it.

The sequence

Cutover without a closed Monday

Lots and streets get rebuilt while they stay open — phased, signed and swept. A sixty-thousand-square-foot retail lot runs one phasing cycle; the plant batches out two extra loads on the Friday so the wearing course goes down before the weekend crew leaves.

  1. Week −2

    Cores & takeoff

    Cores pulled, base logged, square footage taken off the plan set — and the phasing drawn so your traffic keeps moving around the work.

  2. Week 0

    Mobilize & protect

    Traffic control set, inlets masked, curb line protected, and the millings scheduled to the plant as RAP — thirty-one percent of them come back inside the new mix.

  3. Day 1

    Level & tack

    Leveling course on the low reads, 0.06 gallons a square yard of diluted SS-1h, and the planed edges squared for the joint.

  4. Day 2

    Lay & check

    Binder and wearing course, density gauge every 500 square yards, joints matched hot — readings logged to the binder as they come off the gauge.

  5. Day 3

    Stripe & open

    Layout chased to code, beads broadcast, signage reset — and the lot opens on the schedule the phasing promised.

2025 — 2026

Filed and open

Six jobs from the closeout shelf. Every photograph here has a binder behind it with the same name on the spine.

Freight-row lot, Calder Mill
Freight-row lot, Calder Mill — 61,000 sq ft phased over two weekends
Screed pass, Ossian Park
Screed pass, Ossian Park — leveling course on the low reads
The lay, Millgate school
The lay, Millgate school — wearing course between bells
Paver and roller, Tannery Road
Paver and roller, Tannery Road — hot joint down the phase line
Breakdown roll, the depot yard
Breakdown roll, the depot yard — gauge readings logged live
Twin drums, Carroway belt
Twin drums, Carroway belt — collector rehab, one lane open
4.8M sq ft
of pavement laid and reconciled since 2011
58,000 t
of mix placed — every ton on a plant ticket
31% RAP
in every mix we buy, milled from the jobs we came from
0
change orders from unseen base since coring became policy

The record

Numbers you can subpoena

Every figure in this band reconciles against the closeout binders on the shelf above the plan table — the tickets against the takeoffs, the tonnage against the invoices, the RAP against the mill weights. A paving number that cannot be audited is marketing; these can be.

Reviewed

The facility manager’s copy

Four paving bids, one binder. Truegrade was the only outfit that cored our lot before quoting, and the only one whose invoice matched the takeoff to the ton. The density readings are in the closeout, the striping as-built is in the closeout, and when a township engineer asked for the base log two years later, it was in the closeout. That is the whole difference.
J. Marchenko — facilities director, Ossian Park retail group

Asked at pre-bid

Specifiers’ questions

The four that come up in every pre-bid meeting, answered the way the binder answers them. The rest usually dissolve when the sample closeout lands in the room.

What density do you guarantee, and how is it checked?

Compaction to 92% of Marshall design density or better, verified with a gauge on a 500-square-yard grid and logged reading by reading into the closeout binder. Failed readings are re-rolled the same day, while the mat is still hot — not discovered in the spring.

How much RAP ends up in my pavement?

Thirty-one percent on our average mix, thirty-five at the plant ceiling. RAP is not a compromise — milled pavement is asphalt and aggregate we already paid to make, and modern plant blending tests at or above virgin spec. Your old lot is in your new lot; that is the point.

Can the lot stay open during reconstruction?

Yes — that is what phasing is. Half the lot holds traffic while the other half is rebuilt, the phase line gets a hot joint when the second half is laid, and the striping plan tells your customers where to park every morning of the job. Night and weekend cutover is quoted flat when daytime is not workable.

What happens if the cores find a bad base?

Then the number changes — before the work, in writing, with the core that proves it. A full-depth section over failed base runs $2.85–3.40 a foot instead of a $2.45 overlay, and the phasing redraws around the dig. What never happens is the dig happening quietly and the invoice explaining it afterwards.

Pre-bid cores scheduled within five working days · (555) 032-7749 · bids@truegradeasphalt.example

Send the plans, get the binder

A plan set or even a rough square footage starts it. We core, we take off, we phase — and the closeout binder is part of the price, not an option on it. bids@truegradeasphalt.example