Why the Lowest Sealcoating Bid Isn’t Always the Best

In the modern world, it has become increasingly common for people to sometimes confuse a low price with a great value. However, although asphalt sealcoating may sound simple, it requires a contractor with experience, patience, integrity, and an eye for details to achieve great results. When you solicit bids to have your asphalt pavement sealed, the lowest bid may well indicate a poor job that will fail quickly and look terrible, making what you thought was a bargain nothing more than a waste of money. Oftentimes, the contractor submitting a ridiculously low bid is unscrupulous, too inexperienced to know better, or too desperate for work due to a poor reputation.

Why the Lowest Sealcoating Bid Isn’t Always the Best

Why Might a Low Bid for Asphalt Sealcoating Hint That the Contractor Is Unscrupulous?

First, it might be helpful to offer a definition of an unscrupulous sealcoating contractor. This is usually someone who knows all about doing a sealcoating job correctly, but they do not intend to handle the job accordingly. They know that they can tinker with the mix formula to increase its water content, sacrificing the costlier ingredients, including the sealant and aggregates. To reduce labor costs, the contractor may tell you that its is fine to apply one thick coat of sealant instead of two thin coats, or they may tell you that the second coat can be applied before the first one is dry. There are all types of tricks and shortcuts that an unscrupulous contractor can employ, but your results will be inferior and short-lived.

What Might Indicate That a Contractor Is Inexperienced in the Application of Asphalt Sealcoating?

There are two common errors that an inexperienced asphalt company can make when preparing a bid for sealing a pavement. The first is to underestimate the time that the job will require. The contractor may be planning to use a sprayer for the entire operation, but the crew members find that the job requires extensive cut-ins to prevent overspray. The contractor may not understand the impact that cool, cloudy days can have on the curing time of the sealant, so the crew may be left idle between applying the second coat or pavement striping. If time is an issue, the crew may be instructed to rush through the job, or they may be told to take unacceptable shortcuts. The second error that inexperienced contractors commonly make is to underestimate the cost of materials. Perhaps the square footage of the pavement was calculated incorrectly, or the error was made when converting the square footage to the number of gallons of sealant needed. If the contractor orders the sealant mix and other ingredients on a job-by-job basis, the prices may not have been verified with the suppliers prior to preparing your bid. If the contractor’s costs are the issue, you may be faced with overruns on your project, or the asphalt company may get in a hurry to move its equipment and crew members to a more profitable project.