D’s runs paving support as its own discipline: drivers who know how to feed a paver without bumping the screed, dispatch that plans plant slots against the laydown rate, and grindings hauled off on the back-haul so the milling machine is never buried under its own spoil.
How we run it
Before the shift: laydown rate, plant, tonnage and street plan. Dispatch books plant slots to the paver’s real pace — trucks arriving in order, not in a bunch.
During the pull: drivers stage where the traffic-control plan says, approach when waved, and never push mix onto the screed. Grindings from the mill run out on the same rotation, which halves the truck traffic in your closure.
Night paving is standard Bay Area work and standard for us. Give dispatch the shift window and the plant’s night schedule; driver hours are planned legally from the start.
Who orders this
Paving contractors on street and highway work. GCs with parking lots and subdivision streets. Agencies’ maintenance contractors on grind-and-pave programs.
Questions estimators ask
- How many trucks does a paving shift need?
- The paver’s laydown rate and the plant’s distance decide it, not a rule of thumb. Give dispatch tons per hour and the plant, and we size the rotation so mix is always arriving and never queuing.
- Do your drivers know paver etiquette?
- Feeding a paver is a skill: stop short, let the paver come to you, never bump the screed. Our drivers who run paving work do this all season.
- Can you haul the grindings too?
- Yes, and it is usually smarter on the same rotation — grindings out on the back-haul mean fewer trucks in your closure. Recycled grindings often go back to the plant, which shortens the cycle again.
- What happens to a load if the paver goes down?
- Dispatch and the plant talk immediately. Mix already rolling gets held, diverted to handwork, or returned depending on temperature and the plant’s take-back policy — and the trucks behind it are stopped at the plant rather than sent to queue. What you do not want is a line of cooling loads outside a dead paver, and preventing that is dispatch’s job.