I need to get 5-10 tons of road pack delivered to freshen up part of my driveway/parking area. From the street there is the inlet part of the driveway, the sidewalk, and then ~35ft of driveway which is all concrete, maybe 4-5" thick, and the dump truck will have to drive over this to get to the spot I want him to dump the road pack. Do I need to worry about the dump truck damaging the concrete from the weight?

One of the driveway slabs has been tilted up 2-3 inches on one edge over the last 30 years by a giant tulip tree and in my head that means it may not be set in the earth as solidly. Neither the sidewalk nor the driveway have any base to them - just concrete then dirt.

Thanks!

 

Federal highways are 8 to 9" thick. You have 1/2 that plus a damaged section. Order 3 tons at a time if you're worried about. 5 to 10 is a wide range. Can't you narrow it down any more than that? You may only need 2 deliveries.

 

I measured and calculated things more carefully and I actually need 8.5 yards, or about 12 tons. Plus I realized I have a large branch at 11' up at the entrance of my driveway - I'm waiting for the trucking place to call me back with their required clearance.

I also have an asphalt alleyway behind my house with more clearance and I don't have to worry about damage to my concrete. The only downside is that they would have to dump on the alley, which is only used by 2-3 houses and rarely, but I'd still want to get it out of the way quickly.

At $70-100 per delivery, I would not choose to do more than one.

 

You want it as close as possible to the work site. You certainly don't want to have to move all that with wheel barrows. Go with the alley if it's close enough.

 

Your driveway will crack and possibly break up where it has a large root causing it to be elevated. The driver will ask you to sign a release, allowing him to drive on your concrete and requiring you to be responsible for all damages his truck may cause. Most tandem dump trucks today have a tare weight of at least 24,000 lb., meaning the total weight will be 48,000 lb.

I'd buy a few cases of beer, and have a wheel-barrow party with your buddies. Shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 hours to move it all in from the back alley.

 

Do you know what kind of height clearances dump trucks need? The trucking place I called never called me back with that info. I think I can get 13ft through the alley if I push someone's coax up with a pole. About 11.5ft of width at the narrowest point.

The alley spot is literally 10ft from where I would have had them drop it in the driveway, so besides blocking egress for a few hours there's just a ~15% increase to the actual labor needed to spread the stuff.

 

At the most, a tractor trailer needs a 13' 6" clearance, for height. The dump truck should be okay. BTW that was a major design problem, on the World Trade Center. The entrances to B2, which was the common basement, to all of the Trade Center buildings were only 13'. Many trucks had to unload on Veezy St. I'm sure that will be corrected, on the replacement building but the 35 feet of water that the hurricane left has temporarily put the brakes on the job.

 

Sounds like $70-$100 per delivery would be cheap insurance on $1,000 in new concrete.

 

I'll try the alley way. New question now: am I getting screwed if I buy the road pack after a rain? If it absorbs a lot of water then I'll be paying more per yard and it'll be a lot more work to distribute to where I want it.

We got about 0.75" of rain last night and just about nothing for the 2 weeks prior.

 

All material like that is stored outside. Except for several inches near the surface it's always wet to some extent but I'm sure it's holding more water immediately after a heavy rain. I'm sure that different materials hold different amounts of water. Stone blends containing fines & dust probably hold more water than coarser materials but I have no idea how much or if it's even enough to worry about. I just order the material when I need it.

 

I had the road pack delivered on Monday. The dump truck they used looked like it was only ~10ft high so there weren't any issues with clearance. I had the guy drive through the alley and he way able to angle the truck enough to get 1/3 of the pile to land on the end of my driveway (the rest in the alley), so I had to hull it up to 40ft south and 40ft west to get it too all the places it needed to be.

I got 11.2 tons - the pile was about 5ft high with a 10ft base. It took me 6 hours to distribute it all with a trash can and a hand truck. Probably spent a few more hours carefully grading and rejigerring things so that rain water would move away from my house how I wanted.

I didn't get a tamper or anything. In the spots where I didn't want anything to move I did take a concrete block and slam it down some

 

Can it crack, yes

I had a 1/4 mile rock driveway once...they were always delivering rock to freshen it up it seems lol