Commercial asphalt · per-ton bids · Carroway & the Mulberry belt · est. 2009
We bid in tons. We invoice in tons. The variance is half a percent.
Squareyard paves lots, streets and industrial yards on plant-ticket arithmetic: a takeoff you can audit, a tonnage bid against it, and a closeout that reconciles the two to the pound. Every figure on this page came off a ticket with a job name on it.
01 · The takeoff
Square footage from the plan set or the tape, multiplied by depth and converted at 145 pounds a cubic foot — the same page whether the job is a 900-foot drive or a distribution yard. You keep the page; it is the yardstick everything else answers to.
02 · The ticket
The plant weighs every ton onto the truck with your job name printed on the ticket, and the tickets ride in the driver’s window to your site. Tons delivered is tons delivered — not tons estimated at a tailgate meeting.
03 · The true-up
Closeout reconciles the takeoff against the tickets, line for line, and the invoice is the smaller of the arithmetic. In seventeen seasons the gap between bid and bill has never crossed half a percent — and half of that is tack and waste, budgeted in the open.
The per-ton bid sheet · 2026
Binder course, in place$86–94 / t
1.5-in intermediate lift, laid and compacted — includes haul from the Carroway plant
Wearing course, in place$104–118 / t
1-in surface lift, 31% RAP mix, joints matched hot
Streets & collectors$128–146 / t
Per-ton in-place bid with curb protection, sweeping and traffic control
Full-depth reclaim$2.00 / sq ft
Existing drive and base ground into new base in place — per square foot
Striping, beaded$0.76 / lin ft
4-in lines at 15-mil wet latex, glass beads, layout to plan
Mobilization & traffic controlfrom $1,850
Flat, quoted ahead, waived on jobs over 400 tons
The unit is the honesty
Why tons, not feet
Square feet hide thin mats; tons cannot lie — the plant weighs them. A per-ton bid says exactly how much asphalt is arriving at your site, the ticket proves it arrived, and the depth you were promised is division you can do yourself.
How it runs
From plan set to true-up
Walk the takeoff
Plan set or tape, cores on anything over 5,000 square feet, and the length-times-width-times-depth page written while we stand on your lot.
Core & classify
Base sound means overlay dollars; base failed means reclaim or rebuild dollars — the core log says which, before the bid does.
Bid the tonnage
Tons by lift against the sheet above, tack and waste in the open, mobilization flat and waived past 400 tons.
Phase & cutover
Traffic keeps moving around the work — phase lines planned to hot joints, night cutover where daytime cannot run.
True-up & handover
Tickets against takeoff, invoice against the smaller number, and the reconciliation page stapled to the front of the closeout.
The reconciliation band
What ton-for-ton bidding looks like when it comes back from the plant.
2025 — 2026
Ticketed and open
Six jobs from the closeout shelf. Every photograph has a reconciliation page behind it with the same job number in the corner.
I have bought pavement three ways — by the square foot, by the hour and by the ton — and the ton is the only unit the vendor cannot round in his own favour. Squareyard’s closeout put 4,180 ticketed tons against a 4,160-ton takeoff and billed the takeoff. My controller framed the reconciliation page, which is not a sentence I expected to say about asphalt.
Streets & tight windows
Paved overnight, open at six
A collector cannot close for a week and a school lot cannot close at all. We mill, lay and stripe under lights and weekend flags — plant coordination, cones, sweepers and the wearing course down before the first bus. Monday morning finds lines, beads and nothing else.
The window is the contract
The cutover plan goes out with the bid: which nights, which lanes open at six, where the flaggers stand and what the weather fallback costs — flat, quoted ahead, and waived on jobs past 400 tons like everything else on the sheet.
Before the bid goes out
Purchaser’s questions
The four that come back on every request for quote. If yours is not here, the estimating desk answers its own line inside a working day.
How do I know the tonnage on the invoice is real?
Because you already hold the other two documents. The takeoff shows the arithmetic, the plant tickets show what was weighed onto the trucks, and the true-up reconciles them line for line — copies of all three ride with the closeout. The plant’s scale is calibrated by the county, not by us.
What does 31% RAP do to my pavement?
Nothing you would find on a core report except a better price. Reclaimed asphalt is asphalt and aggregate that already exists; plant blending at thirty-one percent tests at or above virgin designs on the mixes we buy, and it decouples half your bill from the price of a barrel. The batch ticket prints the percentage every load.
When is reclaim the wrong answer?
When the failure is drainage rather than structure — a mat holding water because the grade never worked, not because the base is gone. Reclaim rebuilds structure; it does not create fall that was never cut. The core log tells us which one you are holding, and the bid says so in writing before anything is ground.
Do you bid public work?
Yes — municipal street and parking RFPs across the belt, bid per ton in place with the same sheet. The takeoff method, the ticket trail and the reconciliation are the parts public procurement likes best: there is nothing to negotiate after the trucks leave, because the scale already decided.
Takeoffs turned around in two working days · (555) 035-6638 · takeoff@squareyardpaving.example
Send the plan set, get the takeoff page
Plans, a sketch, or an address and a rough square footage — the arithmetic starts the same. Takeoff in two days, cores inside the week, and the bid in tons with the sheet attached. takeoff@squareyardpaving.example