Despite working in sealcoating part time through high school and college, Luke Hay describes himself as “still wet behind the ears” when Hay Sealcoating LLC’s first opportunity to bid a good-size sealcoating job came along in 2016. The job was sealcoating, cracksealing and striping the 89,000-square-foot parking lot of the Chester County Juvenile Detention Center, West Chester, PA.
And he didn’t get it.
“My bid in 2016 was way high,” Hay says, looking back. “I really didn’t understand my costs and application rates. At that point we were really only doing driveways and we were applying sealer by hand with a brush. I didn’t know working on a parking lot was any different or should be approached differently because nobody told me.”
Last July the West Chester, PA, contractor was asked to bid the job again. “I don’t know why they called us; I never asked,” Hay says. “It could be something as simple as they needed three bids and someone had kept our card.”
This time, Hay was ready.
“We re-measured the parking lot, measured out all the cracks and the line striping. There’s no way I was going to take another stab at this job and lose it a second time. We put a good bid together but when we didn’t hear from them we figured we didn’t get the job.”
But in mid-October Hay got the call that they’d won the job -- but the Center needed it done in 2018. “They told us they needed to have the job done and 100 percent completed this fiscal year because that’s when the money was allocated,” Hay says. “They said they needed it done and I wasn’t going to get paid anything if I didn’t get it done this year because that’s when the funding was budgeted.”
Hay says he’d heard horror stories of sealcoating so late in the fall and he’d always wrapped up his season by early November, so he was concerned about sealcoating so late into the season.
“I was expecting a summer job for sure. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be out there the last week of the season on such a big project, and having to deal with the weather and temperature,” he says. “In most cases we wouldn’t be doing work this late in the season, but this was one of the biggest jobs we’d done in 2018.”
Hay explained his concerns to the manager of the Center.
“We were going to be sealcoating into the first week of November and we were worried about the temperature coming down and affecting the sealer,” he says. “The customer said it was up to me whether I wanted to do it or not.”
Hay said the manager wouldn’t sign a waiver, so Hay just “rolled the dice” on whether he might have to redo or fix the job this spring and he took it on.
“It was all my responsibility,” he says.
Branding a Spin-off Business
Luke Hay’s father, Jim, started Jim Hay Lawn & Garden Care, West Chester, PA, in 1987. Jim’s wife, Laurie, handles the office side of the landscaping company. In 2005 Jim bought a used sealcoating rig “on a whim” and started sealcoating residential driveways, piggybacking off his more than 300 landscape customers.
“It was a perfect fit and perfect marketing to let his customers know he was offering a new service,” Hay says. Those sealcoating jobs turned into Luke’s summer job during high school and college. “I was never much for mowing grass but I liked the driveway work.”
When he graduated from college in 2016, he and his dad talked and they decided Luke would take over the sealcoating business and try to grow it. Up until then the sealcoating work had generated between $25,000 and $50,000 each year sealcoating only driveways.
“I wanted to take it to the next level and create a brand and grow it,” Hay says. “I wanted to create our own image.”
One of his first steps was to attend the 2016 National Pavement Expo. “It honestly changed my business,” he says. “I started seeing the potential of what I could do in this industry.”
He says that while his dad was content to grow the sealcoating business slowly as an additional service provided to his landscape customers, Luke came back from NPE with a clear business plan and a way to reach his vision.
First off he wanted to brand the company, to differentiate it from other contractors in the market and also from the landscaping company with which it was so closely associated. He painted the trucks black and orange, different from any other contractors, and he created a new logo. Hay Sealcoating’s crews are branded in orange and black uniforms, too. “So when we pull up on a site our customers know we’re on the site,” Hay says. “It doesn’t look like there’s a bunch of people wandering around; there’s a crew out there.”
And the efforts have been successful in a short time. Sales went from $50,000 in 2016 to $300,000 in 2018 on a mix of 60 percent residential and 40 percent commercial work. From NPE he also learned about additional services he now offers, such as hot pour cracksealing and striping, and about infrared repair which now generates 15 percent of Hay Sealcoating’s revenue.
“We’re getting to where we want to be,” he says. “We have aspirations to get into paving and expect that in the next couple of years we’ll be doing our own paving.”
Adjusting to the Elements
The 89,000-square-foot job at Chester County Juvenile Detention Center included 2,200 linear feet of hot pour cracksealing, sealcoating and striping 75 parking stalls. Scheduling was a challenge because the lot had to remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week all year round because of guards changing shifts as well as intake and discharge of prisoners.
Despite the fact that weekends are busy because of visiting days, Hay decided to divide the lot in half and complete the entire job in two consecutive weekends. “The plan was to start Friday night with the hot pour cracksealing, then spray two coats of sealer the next day, and follow up with striping on Sunday,” he says. “So we planned 2 ½ days for each half and the plan was to do it on consecutive weekends.”
Hay Sealcoating sprayed 1,800 gallons in two coats of a concentrated refined coal tar sealer. Their typical mix design is 70 percent sealer, 30 percent water, 1 percent quick dry additive and 3-5 pounds of silica sand per gallon of sealer.
Hay was particularly concerned about the sealer drying properly considering the cooler temperatures and less sun due to fewer daylight hours. Even though the daytime high temperature was 50° F – the lower end of most sealer producer’s recommendations – Hay Sealcoating sprayed their material.
“But we now know there are things we can do to make us successful in that situation,” he says. One thing, he says, is to be lucky. “If you can have it be a little windy that can be a big help,” he says. “We had some nice wind.”
In the dead of summer Hay Sealcoating’s 5-person crew is already on the job at sunrise, but for this project they delayed their start time to give the pavement and air time to warm up and the pavement time to dry.
“In the fall it’s dewy and if the wet sealer hits that dew it’s never going to dry,” he says. “Waiting made a big difference.”
Hay says he was also concerned that sealer in shaded area and areas next to a building that don’t get much sunlight wouldn’t dry. “I’m not one to look for loopholes but the wind really dried it. So in the future if it’s a little cooler and cloudy but it’s a windy day I know we have a little more leeway that day.”
Hay also relied on an additive, which they doubled for this job, to speed drying. He says that typically they add 5 gallons of a fast-dry additive to 500 gallons of sealer. But for this job they used 10 gallons of additive for 500 gallons of sealer.
“I was a little hesitant because other than adding a small amount of water when it’s really hot in the summer we don’t alter the mix designs. But the extra additive really saved us. The quick-drying additive significantly speeded the drying time.”
He says that each sealcoating truck also carried an extra strainer basket because they weren’t sure what the cooler weather would do to the sealer. “We worried that the combination of the extra latex additive and cooler temperatures might thicken the sealer and make it clump, so we carried the extra basket.”
But they didn’t need to use it.
A Nice Way to End the Season
That first weekend went off on schedule almost exactly as planned, but weather issues forced Hay Sealcoating to wait almost three weeks before they could get back on the other half of the lot on a weekend.
When they finally did get back on the job, they started cracksealing on Friday night with the added preparation step of using a hot air torch to dry the cracks before applying cracksealer. The crew applied two coats of sealer on Saturday, but temperatures Sunday were expected to drop to 40° F. Hay couldn’t leave the parking lot unstriped so his crews worked overnight and into Sunday morning to complete the final striping.
Hay says the project ultimately required five mobilizations where the bid plan was for two. “That was one reason it was such a stressful job,” he says. “But the additional mobilizations did not impact the profitability of the job.
“It was a nice way to end the season,” Hay says. “We faced a little adversity but what we learned will help us in future years.”
