How Many Trucks Do You Need to Pave? Plan Trucks, Milling Days and Weather

The Production plan answers the question a paving foreman asks: how many trucks does it take to hold the rate? Choose Paving, enter the Paving rate to hold in tons an hour, the Working hours and First load on site, and the plan says how many trucks it takes, when the plant should start loading, when the last load is placed and what the trucking costs.

Drive and loading from picks the plant whose measured drive the plan uses, and Type my own lets you enter a round trip by hand. The plan works out how many tons an hour one truck delivers on its cycle (loading, drive out, unloading, drive back) and checks that against what the paver can place. It tells you when the rate you asked for is out of the paver's reach, and Trucks against production shows the same day with fewer and more trucks. Copy schedule copies the loading and arrival schedule for your haulers.

Prefer to start from the trucks you have? Press Or see what your trucks can deliver and it reports the rate they can hold instead.

Google times the drive for a passenger car. A loaded dump truck is slower, so open Slowdown, crew pay and fees and set How slow are your trucks? Choose Slower speed if you think of it as "my trucks run 35% slower", or Longer drive if you think of it as "add 35% to the drive". Both describe the same thing, and the card spells it out: 35% slower speed is a drive that takes 54% longer.

Tap 15, 25, 35, 50 percent, or type your own. A badge shows what it means for a 30 minute drive. If the empty trip back is quicker than the loaded trip out, tick The empty trip back is quicker and set it separately.

Below the slowdown, the same card holds the numbers behind every price. If you have saved your trucks, Use my fleet sets the most trucks you'll run, the tons per truck and the truck rate from them; a mixed fleet is averaged, and the card says so. Otherwise enter them yourself: the truck rate per hour, tons per truck, the hauler's minimum hours per truck, how long loading at the plant takes, and how long the paver takes a load in. Set a default dump fee for old asphalt.

Then price your crew's wait. Crew cost while the paver waits is what your crew costs you per hour while they stand for trucks. Regular hours a day, Overtime pays, Double time after and Double time pays say when that hour gets more expensive. The Day rules buttons set the two common ones: overtime after 8 and double time after 12, or after 10 and 14. Other crew hours that day is setup, travel and cleanup that count toward the day too.

Last, Order extra for waste, Short load is under with a short-load fee, Tolls or per-trip charge and Other trucking charges, and your own limits for the mix: Lowest air temperature you pave in, Longest a load may sit in the truck, Typical wait at the paver, Mix temperature leaving the plant and Lowest mix temperature at the paver. Leave a limit blank and nothing is checked.

Give the job a Planned paving date and a located address (a search does that), then press Get the forecast on Paving day weather. It asks the National Weather Service for the hourly forecast at the job on that day and shows the temperature while your crew works, with the wind and the chance of rain. The Weather Service covers the United States, about a week ahead; outside that the card says so and you set the weather by hand.

The coldest hour points to cold, cool or warm weather, and one tap applies it (with the air temperature) to the plan. Nothing changes until you tap. If you have entered the lowest air temperature you pave in, the card tells you when the forecast falls under it, and when it reaches it, so a later start can fit.

Mix cooling is only a rough estimate. The planner starts from a simple model (about half a degree a minute in a tarped truck, a degree uncovered, more in cold air) that is not a measurement. Enter the temperature leaving the plant and the lowest you will place, and each plant card shows an estimated temperature at the paver and warns if it falls short. The cycle times card can replace the model with your own measured loss.

Choose Milling (demo day) and the plan is built around the grinder, which stops the moment no truck is under its conveyor. Pick Wirtgen 4 ft, Wirtgen 6 ft or My own grinder (its width, depth and how fast it advances), enter the area or the tons to haul off, and the plan says how many trucks keep it moving, how long the cut takes and what the trucking costs.

Where to take the millings compares every plant you have measured plus any other dump you add. Millings usually go to the plant you buy the new asphalt from, often free when you buy there, so that plant is the default; the table prices every other place the same way (trucking plus its fee) so a cheaper dump shows up. A place with no fee entered is listed but not ranked.

Choose Mill and pave the same day when one set of trucks does both. A truck can carry millings to the plant and new asphalt back, so most of the day runs round robin, but not all of it: the grinder starts ahead of the paver, so the first loads of millings go out one way, and the paver finishes behind the grinder, so the last loads of asphalt come in one way.

Set Grinder gets ahead of the paver by to however long that head start really is on this job (15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes, or type your own). The plan splits the day into start, round robin and finish, sizes the trucks for each, and compares sharing them with running a separate fleet for each machine.