MUD SEASON IS LIVE — the dispatch board opens at 6:00 a.m. and photos to dispatch@thawpatchasphalt.example get same-day triage. Winter cold-patch is a hold, not a cure: every hold leaves with a spring quote printed at the tailgate.
How a hole gets handled
Three responses, one board
Every triage ends in one of three calls, made from your pavement with the depth checked and the base read. The call is written on the ticket before anything is loaded, heated or ordered.
One — the winter hold · $95 / patch
November through March: stockpile cold-patch compacted into the squared hole, crowned to shed, and tagged with a spring quote. It is a bandage worn openly as a bandage — it buys your suspension and your April, nothing more, and the ticket says so in those words.
Two — the infrared blend · $3.15 / sq ft
April through October: the box reheats the top two inches of your existing mat past 300 degrees, new mix is folded through, and the whole area re-rolls as one continuous surface — no saw joint, no square scar, no seam for the next thaw to pry. 150 sq ft minimum.
Three — the saw-cut rebuild · $6.40 / sq ft
When the base has failed, and only then: the failed section squared out to sound edges, the base rebuilt and compacted, hot mix in two lifts. Over a failed base an infrared blend is paint on a broken canvas — the triage exists so nobody pays for the wrong one.
The forty-eight
A photo or a call by noon, a truck on your pavement inside forty-eight hours — or the first patch is free and the promise is printed on the ticket it failed on. Paid out four times in eleven seasons; three of them were the same March, and we retired the truck that caused it.
The dispatch day
A hole, from call to cure
By noon
Photo in, triage out
A phone photo of the hole with something for scale lands on the board. Depth, pattern and location get read the same morning — alligatoring says blend, a single crater over soft ground says rebuild, a fresh hole in February says hold.
Same day
The ticket is written
The response, the rate and the spring plan go on one page. If the triage is uncertain, the ticket says “core first” — nobody heats, saws or orders on a guess.
Day one or two
The truck
Inside the forty-eight: the hold compacted and crowned, or the box staged, or the saw line chalked — and either way the hole stops growing before the weekend.
In season
The cure
The blend runs when the mat can take the heat, the rebuild when the plant is batching. Both end the same way: density checked, edges matched, water with nowhere to stand.
Before the truck leaves
The spring page
The long-term fix quoted on the tailgate — sealcoat cycle, routing, overlay or nothing at all. Forty percent of spring pages say “nothing at all,” and that is a number we are proud of.
Thaw List · $190 / yr
The spring list is a membership, not a mailing
Members get the thaw audit walked before the frost is fully out, priority on every dispatch window, and member rates on everything the audit finds. The list exists because the same thousand drives get the same thaw every year — and a hole caught in March as a routing line never becomes the April crater that costs a blend.
What membership carries
The thaw audit$0
Walked each March — crack count, drain check, photos filed year over year
Member cold-patch$76 / patch
Winter holds at the member rate, truck priority inside the forty-eight
Routing & sealcoat$0.88 / sq ft
Cracks chased and the two-coat cycle on our calendar, at member rates
Infrared, member rate$2.95 / sq ft
Blends booked against the audit before the season crowds them out
2025 — 2026
Holes that met their appointment
Six patches from the last two seasons, photographed the day the trucks left. The before-photographs are on the back of every ticket.
Our bus lane grows a crater every March at the same culvert, and for years it was a two-week phone tree. Thawpatch answers with a dispatch number, the truck beats the forty-eight, and the spring page has twice said “rebuild the culvert head and this stops happening” — which we finally did, and it did. A pothole company that fixes the cause is a rare animal.
Is cold-patch just a scam to charge twice?
Not the way we run it. A winter hold is a declared temporary — written on the ticket as one — because compacting hot mix into a January hole is impossible and driving on a crater is worse. The hold is $95, the credit for members carries into the spring fix, and if the spring page says the hold is still holding two years later, that page says “do nothing.” We bank more trust than invoices on that line.
How do you know it’s infrared and not a rebuild?
Where the failure lives. In the top two inches over sound base, the box reheats and blends with no seam. Through the mat and into the base — pumping under traffic, a crater that refills after every rain — it needs the saw-cut rebuild, because blending over a failed base is paint on a broken canvas. The triage reads depth and pattern; a core settles anything the surface cannot.
What if it rains on my dispatch window?
The truck still comes if the hole is a hazard — a cold-patch hold goes down on a wet surface, because a filled hole beats a flooded one. The blend and the rebuild rebook: asphalt laid onto a wet mat refuses the tack coat and delaminates into a handsome new failure. The forty-eight flexes for weather; it does not flex for our convenience.
Do you do whole driveways, or only patches?
Patches, holds, blends, rebuilds and the maintenance that keeps them from multiplying — routing, sealcoat cycles, the thaw audit. When the audit says a mat has run its course we quote the overlay or the reclaim through the same card, and a Thaw List member’s audit history prices it honestly. We are the crew that arrives small; being small is the entire point.
The four regulars
Asked at the board
If yours is not here, send the photo anyway — the board reads every one, and dispatch answers its own line from six in the morning straight through mud season.
The board runs 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., every day of thaw · (555) 055-2870 · dispatch@thawpatchasphalt.example
Send the hole
A photo with something for scale, the address, and whether it is eating a tire or a tire and a hubcap. The triage comes back the same day, the truck inside the forty-eight, and the spring page before it leaves. dispatch@thawpatchasphalt.example