Mill and Pave

Mill and pave, also called mill and overlay, removes the worn top layer of an asphalt surface to a set depth and replaces it with fresh asphalt. It restores the riding surface and the drainage without rebuilding the pavement from the ground up.

Asphalt milling removes the worn surface layer with a cold milling machine. Its carbide-tipped cutting drum leaves a textured surface that the next layer can bond to.

Milling takes the worn layer off first, so the new asphalt is not laid over the failure. A plain overlay goes over the existing surface; that option is covered on asphalt paving.

The written mill and pave scope prices the milling and the paving separately and states the depth and thickness behind each figure, with the timeline and maintenance options, so an owner, a board or a lender can see exactly what is being approved.

Where the base is sound, mill and pave usually costs substantially less than full-depth reconstruction, because only the surface course is replaced.

Mill and pave can be phased across budget cycles: if the budget will not cover the whole parking lot at once, we prioritize the sections that are failing fastest and schedule the rest into later budget cycles.

Milling depth follows the failure found during assessment. We set the depth for the job and state it in the written scope, rather than applying a default.

The removed asphalt is ground into recycled asphalt pavement, taken to a hot mix plant and incorporated into new asphalt mixes.

Milling sometimes exposes soft or saturated areas that no surface inspection could see. When it does, we show you the area, repair it before the new layer goes down and price it separately, so you can see exactly what the base cost and what the surface cost.

Where the failure is wider than a few spots, the area is rebuilt with remove-and-replace repairs on our asphalt paving page; isolated holes are handled as asphalt repair.

Mill and pave fixes drainage during milling, because poor drainage is behind most repeat failures. Variable-depth milling lets us cut the high side of a low area and restore the fall toward the inlets before the new asphalt is placed, so the same low spot stops failing.

We feather partial-milling edges into the sound surface around them. At the final walk-through, we check the transitions at curbs and structures along with grade and drainage.

Mill and pave is scheduled around your operations, using nights, weekends or phased sections, so the property never loses more capacity than one day of work requires.

For resurfacing projects, we take sections in sequence, so tenants park and trucks load in the areas that stay open while one section is closed.

Mill and pave includes a full re-stripe of parking stalls, fire lanes and accessible parking as part of the same job, because milling removes every marking. With the old markings removed, the layout can also be corrected; see our parking lot striping page for layout work.

How long the new surface lasts depends on the base, the thickness, how well it sheds water and how it is maintained. Sealcoating and crack sealing extend its life, and our parking lot maintenance programs keep that upkeep on schedule.