Paving subcontractors carry equipment-intensive overhead profiles similar to civil contractors — heavy paving equipment, rollers, and milling machines drive overhead at small-to-mid scale, while plant relationships and material coordination add overhead complexity.
These benchmarks are drawn from SPM's work with commercial paving contractors and industry data. Calculate your actual overhead rate — total G&A expenses divided by total revenue for the trailing 12 months — and compare to your revenue band below.
How to use this data: If you're above the top of the range, specific categories need review. If you're below the bottom, you may be underinvesting in systems and staff. Use the benchmark as a target range, not a single number.
Trade note for Paving Contractors: Paving contractors who also perform milling, crack sealing, and pavement marking carry more overhead than asphalt-only operations — additional equipment, different material systems, and distinct scheduling windows for each service type add overhead complexity. The benchmarks above apply to paving operations including typical ancillary services.
Paving equipment sitting idle between projects — pavers, rollers, milling machines — carries full ownership cost regardless of utilization. Overhead rate spikes during project gaps. Utilization management is the primary overhead control lever.
Maintaining plant relationships, scheduling tonnage, and coordinating delivery logistics represents coordination overhead that most paving contractors don't track separately. For high-volume asphalt contractors, plant coordination labor is material.
Paving is highly seasonal in most markets. Summer peak revenue dilutes overhead rate. Winter gaps spike it. Using monthly overhead rate benchmarks for a seasonal business like paving produces misleading results — trailing 12-month calculation is essential.
SPM builds equipment hour tracking in ControlQore for paving equipment — logging hours by job. Utilization reports reveal which equipment is earning its ownership cost and which is sitting idle, triggering rent-vs-own analysis for underutilized assets.
For paving contractors, SPM uses trailing 12-month overhead rate rather than monthly rate in benchmark comparisons — smoothing out seasonal revenue variability that creates misleading short-term overhead rate swings.
Asphalt plant scheduling, delivery coordination, and tonnage management labor for high-volume paving operations is tracked as a dedicated overhead category in ControlQore — revealing the true cost of plant relationship management and supporting accurate overhead pricing in bids.
Find out in a free 30-minute call. Josh will tell you straight where your overhead rate stands and what to do about it.
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