Asphalt Delivery Cost: How to Compare Hot Mix Plants by Delivered Cost

Open the Haul Planner and you land on Overview: your saved jobs, the ones in progress, and a Quick comparison for a fast look at an address that is not a job yet. Press New job to make a job of your own, or Save as job on a quick comparison to keep it.

A job holds everything about one piece of work: its address and tons, the plants measured for it, the plant you chose and the estimate saved from it, its trucking assumptions, its weigh tickets and its report. The bar at the top switches jobs and sets a job's Status, from draft through estimated, scheduled and active to completed. Duplicate job copies a job's setup for the next one, and Archive job puts a finished one away: nothing is ever deleted.

Your work saves itself as you go, and the bar says All changes saved when it has. Close the tab and the job is where you left it.

On Compare Plants, fill in This job: its name, the Planned paving date, the job-site address, the tons of new asphalt, the mix, and how far to look with Search within, from 20 minutes up to what your plan allows. The planned date is what the weather forecast and the reports use.

Set First load on site, the time the paver wants its first truck. It sets the times on the dispatch sheet and decides whether the plants are still loading when you need them. Under Advanced options, set Plants close at (or tap 3:30 PM, last load 2:45 if that is how your plants run), the old asphalt to dump, the most trucks you'll run and the tons each carries, tolls and the extra to order for waste.

Don't know the tons? Open Don't know the tons? Figure it from square feet, enter the area and the compacted depth, and press Use this tonnage. It figures tons at 145 lb per cubic foot.

Press Find plants and compare. The planner measures the road drive time, with typical traffic, from the job to every hot mix plant in reach, plus any plants you have added yourself, and lists them nearest first.

This is the one step that costs us a lookup, so it counts against your weekly allowance. Reopening a job you have already searched is free, and so is a plant you have already measured from that address.

On each plant's card, enter your price per ton picked up for the mix, and an old asphalt dump fee if that plant charges one. If you leave the dump fee blank it uses your default. A plant with no price stays at the bottom as Not ranked yet.

If a plant also sells the mix delivered, with its own trucks, type that price in the delivered box. The card then compares hauling it yourself against letting the plant deliver, and says which costs less for this job.

The ranking updates as you type. Cards hold their place while you are typing in them, then re-sort when you move on, so the list does not jump under your thumb.

The banner at the top of the results names the cheapest plant for this job, its total, its delivered cost per ton and how far away it is. It also says how much it saves against the nearest priced plant, which is the comparison most of us make by default.

It only claims what the list supports. With every plant priced it says Lowest delivered cost; with some unpriced it says it is the lowest of the plants priced so far and counts the rest, which could be cheaper. If none of the priced plants can load everything before it stops loading, the banner says that too.

Every card splits its total into mix, trucking (trucks × hours billed, plus any tolls and other trucking charges), dump fee and loads, with the round-trip time per load. Open Cost breakdown for every line: when the paver would wait for trucks, a crew waiting line prices it, with the crew's day and any overtime or double time hours in it, and a short load line appears when the last load is lighter than your short-load limit. A runner-up shows how much more than the best deal it costs and how far its mix price would have to drop to tie. That figure is what you take into a call with a plant.

Warnings appear where they matter: a haul over an hour each way, a load that would sit in the truck longer than your own limit, mix estimated to arrive under your minimum temperature, or a truck count that leaves the paver waiting, with the number of trucks that would keep it moving. The card also shows the time a load sits loaded and, once you have entered the mix's leaving temperature, an estimated temperature at the paver.

Press Use for this job to make this plant the job's plant. Its numbers are saved as the job's estimate, frozen as they were, so the report can compare them with what really happened even if you change a price later. Track this job does the same and takes you to Track Deliveries.

Plants stop loading before the gates close, often 30 to 45 minutes before. With Plants close at set, every card shows when that plant stops loading and when your last load leaves. A long haul or a late start can mean you need more trucks just to get every load out in time, so the planner adds trucks, up to the most you said you would run, and says so: 1 extra truck to beat it.

If even your most trucks cannot get it all out, the card is marked Cannot load it all today with how many loads are too late, and it ranks behind every plant that can. Your options are an earlier start, more trucks, another plant, or letting the plant deliver.

Press Truck count on a card to see the same job run with 1 truck, 2 trucks and so on. Each row shows whether every load gets out in time, how long the job takes, how long the paver waits, the trucking, your crew's day and its waiting cost, and Both, which adds the trucking and the crew's wait. The cheapest number that gets everything out is marked cheapest. Fewer trucks bill fewer hours but leave the paver and crew standing, and once the day runs into overtime or double time, standing costs more.

Press Copy dispatch sheet to copy a plain-text schedule for your haulers: for each truck, when to start loading, when to leave the plant and when to be on site, for every load, based on your first-load time. Paste it into a text message.

Open Plant settings on a card to fix what the directory has wrong or add what you know. Change location moves the plant (paste an address, or the coordinates Google Maps copies when you right-click a spot), and the next search measures from there.

A busy plant is slower to load than a quiet one, so set Loading here, queue included for that plant, and a short-load fee if that plant charges its own. Set Gates close at if the plant's hours differ from your default.

Tick This plant does not take old asphalt and it drops out of any job with a dump, rather than quoting a dump fee it can't charge. Add a private note (scale hours, gate, who to call). Hide this plant from my searches removes one you never buy from; hidden plants are listed lower on the page with a Show again button.

Under Settings, in Your plants, add your own yard, a supplier you buy from, or any plant that is not in the directory. Give it a name, an optional phone number, and an address or coordinates. It is measured on the next search, ranked like any other plant, and keeps its prices from job to job.

You can keep up to 30 of your own plants on a listing plan (10 on the standalone subscription).

Press Copy comparison above the results to copy a plain-text summary of the ranking: each plant, its total, its price per ton delivered, what is in it (mix, trucks, crew waiting, short load, dump) and the saving. Paste it into a text, an email or a bid file so the people who sign off can see why you chose a plant.