The last two months were crunch time for Floyd County’s road paving crews as they rushed to spread as much $28-a-ton asphalt as they could before May 31.
After that, the old contract ran out with the county’s asphalt supplier and the new price went into effect, a 75 percent increase to $48.75 a ton.
Huge price increases for asphalt — as well as tar and other road-building materials — are just the latest effect of sky-high petroleum prices, and road crews nationwide are figuring out how to cope with the costs.
“It’s definitely put a strain on our budget,” said Michael Skeen, public works director for Floyd County. “It’s definitely making us think a lot about what we’re paving.”
So far, the county’s crews are on pace to reach their annual average of paving 50 miles of road countywide, but Skeen said his office won’t have enough money without a midyear budget increase.
At the Georgia Department of Transportation, officials are keeping an uneasy eye on the rising material prices, but so far they haven’t been severe enough to postpone any planned roadwork.
“We’re seeing some pretty hefty price increases,” said Patrick Bowers, the DOT’s district construction engineer for Northwest Georgia. “I have not heard of it slowing a project down.”
For ongoing projects such as the Riverside Parkway widening, the contractors hired to do the work can find themselves stuck with previously agreed-upon prices.
When C.W. Matthews Contracting Co. bid for the Riverside project in late 2004, the company set its asphalt price at $36 to $46 per ton, varying by the type of mix, Bowers said. Today, a bid for a similar project would be more like $60 to $65 per ton.
A job such as Riverside typically attract three bidders, he added, which helps the DOT get good prices. “We do have a lot of competition,” Bowers said.
And asphalt is not the only material experiencing big price increases.
“Concrete has seen a big increase in the past six months. Steel products — big increases,” said Kirk Milam, public works director for the city of Rome. “Those two combined affect us because of drainage pipe, which is concrete reinforced with steel.”
Eventually the prices could get bad enough to cause state DOT projects to be canceled or postponed, but so far that has not happened, said DeWayne Comer, the DOT’s assistant district engineer and pre-construction engineer for Northwest Georgia.
“We haven’t stopped designing projects because of asphalt costs,” he said. “It might shoot the price of the projects up some.”
