My employer had a week long forced outage/shutdown last week. Perfect time for all your normal maintenance type activities I would think. Anyway, first day back is today and I roll in to see them paving the parking lot. Line of hot mix trucks in the drive, pavement spreader thing, two rollers, sweeper and a bobcat all working around employee vehicles. No painted lines, no sign for parking and the lovely smell of hot mix while I wait to spend 8 hours sweating my ass off. Perfect way to start my day.

That's pretty dumb.

Either the contractor pushed them off or somebody wanted a week off last week.

I find that during the summer season you are at the mercy of this type of work. Jobs get pushed back/ahead depending on how long the previous job or the weather conditions were.

I love the smell of fresh, hot, asphalt.

My schedule for providing service to my customers in my little mom-and-pop business is completely FUBAR right now. Vacation schedules.

quote:

Originally posted by hvyhawler:
I love the smell of fresh, hot, asphalt.

Smells like....Victory!

We saw something very similar yesterday OP.
Went by a local correction facility(jail).
They were paving and painting lines in parking lot...Sunday looks like the biggest visiting day as the parking lot had no empty spaces. Looked really dumb doing that on a Sunday???

Look on the bright side, you have a job to go to :-)

I often see a road paved with new asphalt and then a couple months later it gets dug up to install something or another and then paved over again.

quote:

Originally posted by hvyhawler:
I love the smell of fresh, hot, asphalt.

I actually do. Also like the smell asphalt gives off after long dry spell followed by short burst of rain.

Conversely diesel fuel makes me nauseous when I smell it.

I guess some hydrocarbons I like, some I don't.

My local post office is famous for this kind of stuff. I check my post office box daily, so visit six days per week. Due to poor planning there is limited parking and cars often back up into a major highway.

The lot has been repaved several times ALWAYS in the middle of the week. When the large air conditioning units failed, large cranes had to be brought in to do the job. The cranes were dropped off on Monday morning and the lot was blocked off for the whole week, even though the units did not arrive until Wednesday.

Poor planning is not the problem. It is a management issue, and not caring about customers.

In contrast, I have to give credit to MDOT for some stuff. The four lane highway in front of my office was milled and repaved at night, inconveniencing fewer people.

As long as I'm not the one that has to work with that hot crap in the blazing sun in the middle of summer they can do it any time they want!
Has to be a truly awful job... about like roofing in the summer.
You see those poor people and they look like over done baked potatoes.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

Originally posted by hvyhawler:
I love the smell of fresh, hot, asphalt.

I actually do. Also like the smell asphalt gives off after long dry spell followed by short burst of rain.

Conversely diesel fuel makes me nauseous when I smell it.

I guess some hydrocarbons I like, some I don't.

Worked for the city in HS. Loved shoveling asphault and the smell of diesel. De-lish.

I'll take diesel over fresh tar any day, twice on Tuesday. Just prefer the tar would be solid before I am forced to drive on/around it. Tar spots on light paint are annoying.

quote:

Originally posted by cparktd:
As long as I'm not the one that has to work with that hot crap in the blazing sun in the middle of summer they can do it any time they want!
Has to be a truly awful job... about like roofing in the summer.
You see those poor people and they look like over done baked potatoes.

I have a friend that works for a paving company and he loses around 50 lbs during the summer and gains it back in the winter months. Tough way to lose weight.

Jim