I was told once it’s because cities project the job to take say 5 weeks, so they rip it up the first week, leave it for 3 weeks, then repave the last week. And they do this so everyone gets a paycheck for the full 5 weeks. Surely there has to be a different reason?
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I work for a large heavy-highway paving contractor in the southeastern US. While some of the factors mentioned previously are part of the equation there is generally a more obvious answer. Typically, the paving contractor can get more asphalt placed in one shift if they don’t have to worry about the milling of the road (“ripping the road up”) in the same shift. Unless the contract specifically states the road must be paved the same days it’s “ripped up”, we typically will mill the road up and call in the painters at the end of the shift to paint back the lines on the milled surface. Once all of the milling is done, the contractor will schedule the paving to take place. This allows us to use the same trucks that carried the milled asphalt off the road in the ripping stage to carry new hot mix asphalt to place the new road. This helps with 2 things. 1) dump trucks are an important resource & sometimes scarce commodity that need to be managed accordingly. 2) with the road already being milled there is no waiting on the milling of the road to take place before we can start to pave. If we have to mill and pave the road in the same shift the milling starts at the beginning of the shift, let’s say 7:30 am and you will stop milling around 2:00 pm so the paving operations has time to “catch up” at the end of the shift. The actual paving wouldn’t start until 9:30 or 10:00 am and you would pave until 5:00 pm. If the milling has already occurred days or weeks prior, the paving can start @ 7:30 am and pave until 5:00 pm and you have an additional 2+ hrs of paving time. The additional paving time = more asphalt placed in one shift = more production = more profit.
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