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All those interviewed for this article made it clear that their comments were not to be applied directly to any or all products available on the market, but should be applied generally to each category of product as a type of pavement sealer.

Asphalt emulsion sealers
Manufacturers agree that the first thing contractors need to realize is that 100% asphalt-based sealers are very different from coal tar sealers.

"First of all, the material sealer producers buy to make asphalt-based pavement sealers is not produced with that purpose in mind," says Tim Vance, president of Vance Brothers. "It might be produced for some type of road application or it might be produced for something else, but it's never produced to any specification for pavement sealer."

Geoff Crenson, Bonsal American, says there are more variations in asphalt than there are in coal tar products because properties in asphalt can vary much more widely than the industry has experienced in coal tar. Canadian crude oil has different characteristics from Venezuelan crude oil, for example, and those differences will show up in a finished asphalt emulsion sealer.

"Not just physical properties like softening point, penetration, and viscosity of material that can be different but the blending the refineries do to make the asphalt can be different," Crenson says. "Different refineries might actually be blending differently to get the properties they want so the chemical composition of the asphalts might be different."