Concrete contractors, asphalt crews, and barricade companies are getting a work out this summer. In fact, if you are to believe one of the national pizza chains, the roads are so bad that even they are setting out to fill in pot holes. After a very cold winter in the midwest and lots of rain in other parts of the country, there is a growing need for road, parking lot, and sidewalk repair in many parts of the U.S. To the point of causing damage to cars, there are many cities that find themselves getting bids from many concrete contractors to make sure that these problems get fixed while the weather remains nice.
From sidewalk to driveway repairs, there are also a number of home owners who are using this summer to make sure that they fix the problems that they have on their own property. Even new home owners are looking at options like driveway sealing to make sure that their property looks as good as it can for as long as it can.
Paving Contractors Work Through All Hours of the Night to Make Sure That They Meet Deadlines
Unfortunately, too many of us know that horrible sound and feel of hitting a major pothole when you are traveling across the town. Sometimes the jolt is so hard it shuts your cruise control off, sometimes it wakes the baby in the car seat, and sometimes it causes a flat tire. Consider some of these facts and figures about the road and parking lot surfaces in the U.S. and the industry that works to make these surfaces as smooth as possible:
- There are approximately 18 billion tons of asphalt pavement in U.S. roads.
- In addition, there are more than 90% of parking areas in the U.S. that are surfaced with asphalt pavement.
- The U.S. paving industry employed 284,626 people at 195,603 businesses in the year 2017.
- Approximately 94% of the 2.2 million miles of paved roads in the U.S are surfaced with asphalt.
- Producing about 350 million tons of asphalt pavement material a year, there are nearly 3,500 asphalt mix production sites in operation across America.
- The Environmental Protection Agency estimates the cement industry keeps nearly 53 million tires from the waste stream each year by safely using them for fuel in production facilities.
If you are planning a car trip this summer, there is a strong likelihood that you will need to plan time for road repair along your route.
